FHROUGH  OUR 


AGNES  C-LAUT 


BANCROFT    LIBRARY 


Montezutna'fl   ('a-tlr.   ilu-  rnim-d  cliff  dwelling  on  Beaver 

(  rt-rk    1n-t WITH    tlu-    ( Oconiiio    and    Prescdtt    National 
Ft  treats,   Ari/oiia 


THROUGH 

OUR  UNKNOWN 

SOUTHWEST 

THE  WONDERLAND  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES- 
LITTLE  KNOWN  AND  UNAPPRECIATED  — THE 
HOME  OF  THE  CLIFF  DWELLER  AND  THE 
HOPI,  THE  FOREST  RANGER  AND  THE  NAVAJO, 
—  THE  LURE  OF  THE  PAINTED  DESERT 

BY 

AGNES  C.  LAUT 

Author  of  The  Conquest  of  the  Great  Northwest, 
Lords  of  the  North  and  Freebooters  of  the  Wilderness 


NEW  YORK 

McBRIDE,  NAST  &  COMPANY 
1913 


COPYRIGHT,  1913,  BY 
McBRIDE,  NAST  &  CO. 


Second  Printing 
October,  1913 


Published  May,  191S 


u.  o. 

5ADEMY    OF 
CIFIC  COAST 
HISTORY 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

i 


INTRODUCTION 

I    THE  NATIONAL  FORESTS i 

II  NATIONAL  FORESTS  OF  THE  SOUTHWEST    .     .     22 

III  THROUGH  THE  PECOS  FORESTS      ....     44 

IV  THE  CITY  OF  THE  DEAD 60 

V  THE  ENCHANTED  MESA  OF  ACOMA    ...     78 

VI    ACROSS  THE  PAINTED  DESERT 100 

VII  ACROSS  THE  PAINTED  DESERT  (continued)      .   116 

VIII  GRAND  CANON  AND  THE  PETRIFIED  FORESTS     137 

IX  THE  GOVERNOR'S  PALACE  OF  SANTA  FE  .     .153 

X  THE  GOVERNOR'S  PALACE    (continued)     .     .169 

XI    TAGS,  THE  PROMISED  LAND 183 

XII  TAGS,  THE  MOST  ANCIENT  CITY  IN  AMERICA   196 

XIII  SAN  ANTONIO,  THE  CAIRO  OF  AMERICA    .      .214 

XIV  CASA  GRANDE  AND  THE  GILA 226 

XV  SAN  XAVIER  DEL  BAG  MISSION     .     .     .     .251 


THE  ILLUSTRATIONS 

Cliff  dwelling  ruins,  known  as  Montezuma  Castle,  Frontispiece 


FACING 
PAGE 


South  House  of  Frijoles  Canon ii 

Indian  woman  making  pottery xii 

Indian  girl  of  Isleta,  N.    M. xx 

One  way  of  entering  the  desert 4 

In  the  Coconino  Forest  of  Arizona 14 

Forest  ranger  fighting  a  ground  fire  with  his  blanket       .     22 

Pueblo  boys  at  play 34 

Chili  peppers  drying  outside  pueblo  dwelling  ....     46 

Los  Pueblos,  Taos,  N.  M 56 

Entrance  to  a  cliff  dwelling 64 

Ruins  of  Frijoles  Canon 74 

A  Hopi  wooing 80 

A  Hopi  weaver  .          86 

A  shy  little  Hopi  maid 92 

At  the  water  hole  on  the  outskirts  of  Laguna       ...     96 

A  handsome  Navajo  boy 106 

The  Pueblo  of  Walpi , 122 

The  Grand  Canon 140 

The  Governor's  Palace  at  Santa  Fe  .  .154 


THE  ILLUSTRATIONS 


FACING 

PAGE 


A  pool  in  the  Painted  Desert 160 

Street  in  Santa  Fe 166 

Ancient  adobe  gateway 172 

San  Ildefonso 180 

Taos 188 

Over  the  roofs  of  Taos 198 

A  metal  worker  of  Taos 208 

A  mud  house  of  the  Southwest 220 

The  enchanted  Mesa  of  Acoma 230 

Navajo  crossing  mesa 246 

At  the  Mission  of  San  Xavier 254 

A  Moki  City  on  a  mesa 262 


THROUGH  OUR  UNKNOWN 
SOUTHWEST 


INTRODUCTION 

I  AM  sitting  in  the  doorway  of  a  house  of  the 
Stone  Age  —  neolithic,  paleolithic,  troglodytic 
man  —  with  a  roofless  city  of  the  dead  lying 
in  the  valley  below  and  the  eagles  circling  with  lonely 
cries  along  the  yawning  caverns  of  the  cliff  face 
above. 

My  feet  rest  on  the  topmost  step  of  a  stone  stair- 
way worn  hip-deep  in  the  rocks  of  eternity  by  the 
moccasined  tread  of  foot-prints  that  run  back,  not  to 
A.  D.  or  B.  C.,  but  to  those  post-glacial  aeons  when 
the  advances  and  recessions  of  an  ice  invasion  from 
the  Poles  left  seas  where  now  are  deserts;  when  giant 
sequoia  forests  were  swept  under  the  sands  by  the 
flood  waters,  and  the  mammoth  and  the  dinosaur 
and  the  brontosaur  wallowed  where  now  nestle  farm 
hamlets. 

Such  a  tiny  doorway  it  is  that  Stone  Man  must 
have  been  obliged  to  welcome  a  friend  by  hauling 
him  shoulders  foremost  through  the  entrance,  or 
able  to  speed  the  parting  foe  down  the  steep  stair- 
way with  a  rock  on  his  head.  Inside,  behind  me, 
is  a  little  dome-roofed  room,  with  calcimined  walls, 
and  squared  stone  meal  bins,  and  a  little,  high  fire- 
place, and  stone  pillows,  and  a  homemade  flour  mill 
in  the  form  of  a  flat  metate  stone  with  a  round  grind- 


ii  INTRODUCTION 

ing  stone  on  top.  From  the  shape  and  from  the 
remnants  of  pottery  shards  lying  about,  I  suspect  one 
of  these  hewn  alcoves  in  the  inner  wall  was  the  place 
for  the  family  water  jar. 

On  each  side  the  room  are  tiny  doorways  leading 
by  stone  steps  to  apartments  below  and  to  rooms 
above;  so  that  you  may  begin  with  a  valley  floor 
room  which  you  enter  by  ladder  and  go  halfway  to 
the  top  of  a  5OO-foot  cliff  by  a  series  of  interior  lad- 
ders and  stone  stairs.  Flush  with  the  floor  at  the 
sides  of  these  doors  are  the  most  curious  little  round 
"  cat  holes  "  through  the  walls —  "  cat  holes  "  for 
a  people  who  are  not  supposed  to  have  had  any 
cats;  yet  the  little  round  holes  run  from  room  to 
room  through  all  the  walls. 

On  some  of  the  house  fronts  are  painted  emblems 
of  the  sun.  Inside,  round  the  wall  of  the  other 
houses,  runs  a  drawing  of  the  plumed  serpent  — 
"  Awanya,"  guardian  of  the  waters  —  whose  pres- 
ence always  presaged  good  cheer  of  water  in  a  desert 
land  growing  drier  and  drier  as  the  Glacial  Age  re- 
ceded, and  whose  serpent  emblem  in  the  sky  you 
could  see  across  the  heavens  of  a  starry  night  in  the 
Milky  Way.  Lying  about  in  other  cave  houses  are 
stone  "  bells  "  to  call  to  meals  or  prayers,  and  cobs 
of  corn,  and  prayer  plumes  —  owl  or  turkey  feath- 
ers. Don't  smile  and  be  superior!  It  isn't  a  hun- 
dred years  ago  since  the  common  Christian  idea  of 
angels  was  feathers  and  wings;  and  these  Stone  Peo- 
ple lived  —  well,  when  did  they  live?  Not  later 
than  400  A.  D.,  for  that  was  when  the  period  of 


INTRODUCTION  iii 

desiccation,   or  drought  from  the  recession  of  the 
glacial  waters,  began. 

"  The  existence  of  man  in  the  Glacial  Period  is  es- 
tablished," says  Winchell,  the  great  western  geolo- 
gist, "  that  implies  man  during  the  period  when  flour- 
ished the  large  mammals  now  extinct.  In  short, 
there  is  as  much  evidence  pointing  to  America  as  to 
Asia  as  the  primal  birthplace  of  man."  Now  the 
ice  invasion  began  hundreds  of  thousands  of  years 
ago;  and  the  last  great  recession  is  set  at  about  10,000 
years;  and  the  implements  of  Stone  Age  man  are 
found  contemporaneous  with  the  glacial  silt. 

There  is  not  another  section  in  the  whole  world 
where  you  can  wander  for  days  amid  the  houses 
and  dead  cities  of  the  Stone  Age ;  where  you  can  lit- 
erally  shake  hands  with  the  Stone  Age. 

Shake  hands?  Isn't  that  putting  it  a  little  strong? 
It  doesn't  sound  like  the  dry-as-dust  dead  collections 
of  museums.  It  may  be  putting  it  strong;  but  it  is 
also  meticulously  and  simply  —  true.  A  few  doors 
away  from  the  cave-house  where  I  sit,  lies  a  little 
body  —  no,  not  a  mummy!  We  are  not  in  Egypt. 
We  are  in  America ;  but  we  often  have  to  go  to  Egypt 
to  find  out  the  wonders  of  America.  Lies  a  little 
body,  that  of  a  girl  of  about  eighteen  or  twenty, 
swathed  in  otter  and  beaver  skins  with  leg  bindings 
of  woven  yucca  fiber  something  like  modern  burlap. 
Woven  cloth  from  20,000  to  10,000  B.  C.?  Yes! 
That  is  pretty  strong,  isn't  it?  Tis  when  you  come 
to  consider  it;  our  European  ancestors  at  that  date 


iv  INTRODUCTION 

were  skipping  through  Hyrcanian  Forests  clothed 
mostly  in  the  costume  Nature  gave  them;  Herbert 
Spencer  would  have  you  believe,  skipping  round  with 
simian  gibbering  monkey  jaws  and  claws,  clothed 
mostly  in  apes'  hair.  Yet  there  lies  the  little  lady 
in  the  cave  to  my  left,  the  long  black  hair  shiny  and 
lustrous  yet,  the  skin  dry  as  parchment  still  holding 
the  finger  bones  together,  head  and  face  that  of  a 
human,  not  an  ape,  all  well  preserved  owing  to  the 
gypsum  dust  and  the  high,  dry  climate  in  which  the 
corpse  has  lain. 

In  my  collection,  I  have  bits  of  cloth  taken  from 
a  body  which  archaeologists  date  not  later  than  400 
A.  D.  nor  earlier  than  8,000  B.  C.,  and  bits  of  corn 
and  pottery  from  water  jars,  placed  with  the  dead  to 
sustain  them  on  the  long  journey  to  the  Other  World. 
For  the  last  year,  I  have  worn  a  pin  of  obsidian  which 
you  would  swear  was  an  Egyptian  scarab  if  I  had  not 
myself  obtained  it  from  the  ossuaries  of  the  Cave 
Dwellers  in  the  American  Southwest. 

Come  out  now  to  the  cave  door  and  look  up  and 
down  the  canon  again!  To  right  and  to  left  for  a 
height  of  500  feet  the  face  of  the  yellow  tufa  preci- 
pice is  literally  pitted  with  the  windows  and  doors 
of  the  Stone  Age  City.  In  the  bottom  of  the  valley 
is  a  roofless  dwelling  of  hundreds  of  rooms  —  "the 
cormorant  and  the  bittern  possess  it;  the  owl  also 
and  the  raven  dwell  in  it;  stones  of  emptiness;  thorns 
in  the  palaces;  nettles  and  brambles  in  the  fortresses; 
and  the  screech  owl  shall  rest  there." 

Listen !     You  can  almost  hear  it ! —  the  fulfillment 


INTRODUCTION  v 

of  Isaiah's  old  prophecy  —  the  lonely  "  hoo-hoo- 
hoo  "  of  the  turtle  dove ;  and  the  lonelier  cry  of  the 
eagle  circling,  circling  round  the  empty  doors  of  the 
upper  cliffs !  Then,  the  sharp,  short  bark-bark-bark 
of  a  fox  off  up  the  canon  in  the  yellow  pine  forests 
towards  the  white  snows  of  the  Jemez  Mountains; 
and  one  night  from  my  camp  in  this  canon,  I  heard 
the  coyotes  howling  from  the  empty  caves. 

Below  are  the  roofless  cities  of  the  dead  Stone 
Age,  and  the  dancing  floors,  and  the  irrigation  canals 
used  to  this  day,  and  the  stream  leaping  down  from 
the  Jemez  snows,  which  must  once  have  been  a  rush- 
ing torrent  where  wallowed  such  monsters  as  are 
known  to-day  only  in  modern  men's  dreams. 

Far  off  to  the  right,  where  the  worshipers  must 
always  have  been  in  sight  of  the  snowy  mountains 
and  have  risen  to  the  rising  of  the  desert  sun  over 
cliffs  of  ocher  and  sands  of  orange  and  a  sky  of  tur- 
quoise blue,  you  can  see  the  great  Kiva  or  Ceremon- 
ial Temple  of  the  Stone  Age  people  who  dwelt  in  this 
canon.  It  is  a  great  concave  hollowed  out  of  the 
white  pumice  rock  almost  at  the  cliff  top  above  the 
tops  of  the  highest  yellow  pines.  A  darksome,  cav- 
ernous thing  it  looks  from  this  distance,  but  a  won- 
derful mid-air  temple  for  worshipers  when  you  climb 
the  four  or  five  hundred  ladder  steps  that  lead  to  it 
up  the  face  of  a  white  precipice  sheer  as  a  wall. 
What  sights  the  priests  must  have  witnessed !  I  can 
understand  their  worshiping  the  rising  sun  as  the  first 
rays  came  over  the  canon  walls  in  a  shield  of  fire. 
Alcoves  for  meal,  for  incense,  for  water  urns,  mark 


vi  INTRODUCTION 

the  inner  walls  of  this  chamber,  too.  Where  the 
ladder  projects  up  through  the  floor,  you  can  descend 
to  the  hollowed  underground  chamber  where  the 
priests  and  the  council  met;  a  darksome,  eerie  place 
with  sipapu  —  the  holes  in  the  floor  —  for  the  mystic 
Earth  Spirit  to  come  out  for  the  guidance  of  his  peo- 
ple. Don't  smile  at  that  idea  of  an  Earth  Spirit  1 
What  do  we  tell  a  man,  who  has  driven  his  nerves 
too  hard  in  town  ?  —  To  go  back  to  the  Soil  and  let 
Dame  Nature  pour  her  invigorating  energies  into 
him !  That's  what  the  Earth  Spirit,  the  Great  Earth 
Magician,  signified  to  these  people. 

Curious  how  geology  and  archaeology  agree  on  the 
rise  and  evanishment  of  these  people.  Geology  says 
that  as  the  ice  invasion  advanced,  the  northern  races 
were  forced  south  and  south  till  the  Stone  Age  folk 
living  in  the  roofless  City  of  the  Dead  on  the  floor 
of  the  valley  were  forced  to  take  refuge  from  them 
in  the  caves  hollowed  out  of  the  cliff.  That  was 
any  time  between  20,000  B.C.  and  10,000  B.C. 
Archaeology  says  as  the  Utes  and  the  Navajo  and 
the  Apache  —  Asthapascan  stock  —  came  ramping 
from  the  North,  the  Stone  Men  were  driven  from 
the  valleys  to  the  inaccessible  cliffs  and  mesa  table 
lands.  "  It  was  not  until  the  nomadic  robbers 
forced  the  pueblos  that  the  Southwestern  people 
adopted  the  crowded  form  of  existence,"  says  Archae- 
ology. Sounds  like  an  explanation  of  our  modern 
skyscrapers  and  the  real  estate  robbers  of  modern 
life,  doesn't  it? 


INTRODUCTION  vii 

Then,  as  the  Glacial  Age  had  receded  and  drought 
began,  the  cave  men  were  forced  to  come  down  from 
their  cliff  dwellings  and  to  disperse.  Here,  too,  is 
another  story.  There  may  have  been  a  great  cata- 
clysm; for  thousands  of  tons  of  rock  have  fallen 
from  the  face  of  the  canon,  and  the  rooms  remain- 
ing are  plainly  only  back  rooms.  The  Hopi  and 
Moki  and  Zuni  have  traditions  of  the  "  Heavens 
raining  fire;  "  and  good  cobs  of  corn  have  been  found 
embedded  in  what  may  be  solid  lava,  or  fused  adobe. 
Pajarito  Plateau,  the  Spanish  called  this  region  — 
"  place  of  the  bird  people,"  who  lived  in  the  cliffs 
like  swallows;  but  thousands  of  years  before  the 
Spanish  came,  the  Stone  Age  had  passed  and  the 
cliff  people  dispersed. 

What  in  the  world  am  I  talking  about,  and  where  ? 
That's  the  curious  part  of  it.  If  it  were  in  Egypt, 
or  Petrae,  or  amid  the  sand-covered  columns  of 
Phrygia,  every  tourist  company  in  the  world  would 
be  arranging  excursions  to  it;  and  there  would  be 
special  chapters  devoted  to  it  in  the  supplementary 
readers  of  the  schools ;  and  you  wouldn't  be  —  well, 
just  au  fait,  if  you  didn't  know;  but  do  you  know 
this  wonder- world  is  in  America,  your  own  land? 
It  is  less  than  forty  miles  from  the  regular  line  of 
continental  travel;  $6  a  single  rig  out,  $14  a  double; 
$i  to  $2  a  day  at  the  ranch  house  where  you  can 
board  as  you  explore  the  amazing  ancient  civiliza- 
tion of  our  own  American  Southwest.  This  particu- 
lar ruin  is  in  the  Frijoles  Canon;  but  there  are  hun- 


viii  INTRODUCTION 

dreds,  thousands,  of  such  ruins  all  through  the  South- 
west in  Colorado  and  Utah  and  Arizona  and  New 
Mexico.  By  joining  the  Archaeological  Society  of 
Santa  Fe,  you  can  go  out  to  these  ruins  even  more 
inexpensively  than  I  have  indicated. 

A  general  passenger  agent  for  one  of  the  largest 
transcontinental  lines  in  the  Northwest  told  me  that 
for  1911,  where  60,000  people  bought  round-trip 
tickets  to  our  own  West  and  back  —  pleasure,  not 
business — over  120,000  people  bought  tickets  for 
Europe  and  Egypt.  I  don't  know  whether  his 
figures  covered  only  the  Northwest  of  which  he  was 
talking,  or  the  whole  continental  traffic  association; 
but  the  amazing  fact  to  me  was  the  proportion  he 
gave  —  one  to  our  own  wonders,  to  two  for  abroad. 
I  talked  to  another  agent  about  the  same  thing.  He 
thought  that  the  average  tourist  who  took  a  trip  to 
our  own  Pacific  Coast  spent  from  $300  to  $500, 
while  the  average  tourist  who  went  to  Europe  spent 
from  $1,000  to  $2,000.  Many  European  tourists 
went  at  $500;  but  so  many  others  spent  from  $3,000 
to  $5,000,  that  he  thought  the  average  spendings 
of  the  tourist  to  Europe  should  be  put  at  $1,000  to 
$2,000.  That  puts  your  proportion  at  a  still  more 
disastrous  discrepancy  —  thirty  million  dollars  versus 
one  hundred  and  twenty  million.  The  Statist  of 
London  places  the  total  spent  by  Americans  in  Europe 
at  nearer  three  hundred  million  dollars  than  one  hun- 
dred and  twenty  million. 

Of  the  3,700,000  people  who  went  to  the  Seattle 


INTRODUCTION  lx 

Exposition,  it  is  a  pretty  safe  guess  that  not  100,000 
Easterners  out  of  the  lot  saw  the  real  West.  What 
did  they  see?  They  saw  the  Exposition,  which  was 
like  any  other  exposition;  and  they  saw  Western 
cities,  that  are  imitations  of  Eastern  cities;  and  they 
patronized  Western  hotel  rotundas  and  dining  places, 
where  you  pay  forty  cents  for  Grand  Junction  and 
Hood  River  fruit,  which  you  can  buy  in  the  East  for 
twenty-five ;  and  they  rode  in  the  rubberneck  cars  with 
the  gramophone  man  who  tells  Western  variations 
of  the  same  old  Eastern  lies;  and  they  came  back 
thoroughly  convinced  that  there  was  no  more  real 
West. 

And  so  120,000  Americans  yearly  go  to  Europe 
spending  a  good  average  of  $1,000  apiece.  We 
scour  the  Alps  for  peaks  that  everybody  has  climbed, 
though  there  are  half  a  dozen  Switzerlands  from 
Glacier  Park  in  the  north  to  Cloudcroft,  New  Mex- 
ico, with  hundreds  of  peaks  which  no  one  has  climbed 
and  which  you  can  visit  for  not  more  than  fifty  dol- 
lars for  a  four  weeks1  holiday.  We  tramp  through 
Spain  for  the  picturesque,  quite  oblivious  of  the  fact 
that  the  most  picturesque  bit  of  Spain,  about  10,000 
years  older  than  Old  Spain,  is  set  right  down  in  the 
heart  of  America  with  turquoise  mines  from  which 
the  finest  jewel  in  King  Alphonso's  crown  was  taken. 
We  rent  a  "  shootin'  box  in  Scotland  "  at  a  trifling 
cost  of  from  $1,200  to  $12,000  a  season,  because 
game  is  "  so  scarce  out  West,  y'  know."  Yet  I  can 
direct  you  to  game  haunts  out  West  where  you  can 
shoot  a  grizzly  a  week  at  no  cost  at  all  but  your  own 


x  INTRODUCTION 

courage;  and  bag  a  dozen  wild  turkeys  before  break- 
fast; and  catch  mountain  trout  faster  than  you  can 
string  them  and  pose  for  a  photograph;  and  you 
won't  need  to  lie  about  the  ones  that  got  away,  nor 
boast  of  what  it  cost  you;  for  you  can  do  it  at  two 
dollars  a  day  from  start  to  finish.  It  would  take 
you  a  good  half-day  to  count  up  the  number  of  tour- 
ist and  steamboat  agencies  that  organize  sightseeing 
excursions  to  go  and  apostrophize  the  Sphinx,  and 
bark  your  shins  and  swear  and  sweat  on  the  Pyra- 
mids. Yet  it  would  be  a  safe  wager  that  outside  of- 
ficial scientific  circles,  there  is  not  a  single  organiza- 
tion in  America  that  knows  we  have  a  Sphinx  of  our 
own  in  the  West  that  antedates  Egyptian  archaeology 
by  8,000  years,  and  stone  lions  older  than  the  col- 
umns of  Phrygia,  and  kings'  palaces  of  700  and 
1,000  rooms.  Am  I  yarning;  or  dreaming? 
Neither !  Perfectly  sober  and  sane  and  wide  awake 
and  just  in  from  spending  two  summers  in  those 
same  rooms  and  shaking  hands  with  a  corpse  of  the 
Stone  Age. 

A  young  Westerner,  who  had  graduated  from 
Harvard,  set  out  on  the  around-the-world  tour  that 
was  to  give  him  that  world-weary  feeling  that  was 
to  make  him  live  happy  ever  afterwards.  In  Naga- 
saki, a  little  brown  Jappy-chappie  of  great  learning, 
who  was  a  prince  or  something  or  other  of  that  sort, 
which  made  it  possible  for  Harvard  to  know  him, 
asked  in  choppy  English  about  "  the  gweat,  the  vely 
gweat  anti-kwatties  in  y'or  Souf  WesV  When 
young  Harvard  got  it  through  his  head  that  "  anti- 


INTRODUCTION  xi 

kwatties "  meant  antiquities,  he  rolled  a  cigarette 
and  went  out  for  a  smoke;  but  it  came  back  at  him 
again  in  Egypt.  They  were  standing  below  the  chin 
of  an  ancient  lady  commonly  called  the  Sphinx,  when 
an  English  traveler  turned  to  young  America.  "  I 
say,"  he  said;  "  Yankeedom  beats  us  all  out  on  this 
old  dame,  doesn't  it?  You've  a  carved  colossus  in 
your  own  West  a  few  trifling  billion  years  older  than 
this,  haven't  you?  "  Young  America,  with  a  weak- 
ness somewhere  in  his  middle,  "  guessed  they  had." 
Then  looking  over  the  old  jewels  taken  from  the 
ruins  of  Pompeii,  he  was  asked,  "  how  America  was 
progressing  excavating  her  ruins;"  and  he  heard 
for  the  first  time  in  his  life  that  the  finest  crown 
jewel  in  Europe  came  from  a  mine  just  across  the 
line  from  his  own  home  State.  The  experience  gave 
him  something  to  think  about. 

The  incident  is  typical  of  many  of  the  120,000 
people  who  yearly  trek  to  Europe  for  holiday.  We 
have  to  go  abroad  to  learn  how  to  come  home.  We 
go  to  Europe  and  find  how  little  we  have  seen  of 
America.  It  is  when  you  are  motoring  in  France 
that  you  first  find  out  there  is  a  great  "  Camino 
Real"  almost  1,000  miles  long,  much  of  it  above 
cloud  line,  from  Wyoming  to  Texas.  It's  some 
European  who  has  u  a  shootin'  box "  out  in  the 
Pecos,  who  tells  you  about  it.  Of  course,  if  you  like 
spending  $12,000  a  year  for  "a  shootin'  box"  in 
Scotland,  that  is  another  matter.  There  are  various 
ways  of  having  a  good  time;  but  when  I  go  fishing  I 
like  to  catch  trout  and  not  be  a  sucker. 


xii  INTRODUCTION 

Spite  of  the  legend,  "Why  go  to  Europe?  See 
America  first,"  we  keep  on  going  to  Europe  to  see 
America.  Why?  For  a  lot  of  reasons;  and  most 
of  them  lies. 

Some  fool  once  said,  and  we  keep  on  repeating  it 
—  that  it  costs  more  to  go  West  than  it  does  to  go 
to  Europe.  So  it  does,  if  "  going  West "  means 
staying  at  hotels  that  are  weak  imitations  of  the 
Waldorf  and  the  Plaza,  where  you  never  get  a  sniff 
of  the  real  West,  nor  meet  anyone  but  traveling  East- 
erners like  yourself;  but  if  you  strike  away  from  the 
beaten  trail,  you  can  see  the  real  West,  and  have 
your  holiday,  and  go  drunk  on  the  picturesque,  and 
break  your  neck  mountain  climbing,  and  catch  more 
trout  than  you  can  lie  about,  and  kill  as  much  bear 
meat  as  you  have  courage,  at  less  expense  than  it  will 
cost  you  to  stay  at  home.  From  Chicago  to  the 
backbone  of  the  Rockies  will  cost  you  something 
over  $33  or  $50  one  way.  You  can't  go  half-way 
across  the  Atlantic  for  that,  unless  you  go  steerage; 
and  if  you  go  West  "  colonist,"  you  can  go  to  the 
backbone  of  the  Rockies  for  a  good  deal  less  than 
thirty  dollars.  Now  comes  the  crucial  point!  If 
you  land  in  a  Western  city  and  stay  at  a  good  hotel, 
expenses  are  going  to  out-sprint  Europe;  and  you 
will  not  see  any  more  of  the  West  than  if  you  had 
gone  to  Europe.  Choose  your  holiday  stamping 
ground,  Sundance  Canon,  South  Dakota;  or  the  New 
Glacier  Park;  or  the  Pecos,  New  Mexico;  or  the 
White  Mountains,  Arizona;  or  the  Indian  Pueblo 
towns  of  the  Southwest;  or  the  White  Rock  Canon 


INTRODUCTION  xiii 

of  the  Rio  Grande,  where  the  most  important  of  the 
wonderful  prehistoric  remains  exist;  and  you  can 
stay  at  a  ranch  house  where  food  and  cleanliness 
will  be  quite  as  good  as  at  the  Waldorf  for  from  $1.50 
to  $2  a  day.  You  can  usually  find  the  name  of  the 
ranch  house  by  inquiries  from  the  station  agent  where 
you  get  off.  The  ranch  house  may  be  of  adobe  and 
look  squatty;  but  remember  that  adobe  squattiness 
is  the  best  protection  against  wind  and  heat;  and  in- 
side, you  will  find  hot  and  cold  water,  bathroom,  and 
meals  equal  to  the  best  hotels  in  Chicago  and  New 
York.  In  New  York  or  Chicago,  that  amount  would 
afford  you  mighty  chancy  fare  and  only  a  back  hall 
room.  I  know  of  hundreds  of  such  ranch  houses  all 
along  the  backbone  of  the  Rockies. 

Next  comes  the  matter  of  horses  and  rigs.  If 
you  stay  at  one  of  the  big  hotels,  you  will  pay  from 
$5  to  $10  a  day  for  a  rig,  and  $20  for  a  motor. 
Out  at  the  ranch  house,  you  can  rent  team,  driver 
and  double  rig  at  $4;  or  a  pony  at  $20  for  a  month, 
or  buy  a  burro  outright  for  from  $5  to  $10.  Even 
if  the  burro  takes  a  prize  for  ugliness,  remember  he 
also  takes  a  prize  for  sure-footedness;  and  he  doesn't 
take  a  prize  for  bucking,  which  the  broncho  often 
does.  Figure  up  now  the  cost  of  a  month's  holiday ; 
and  I  repeat  —  it  will  cost  you  less  than  staying  at 
home.  But  if  this  total  is  still  too  high,  there  are 
ways  of  reducing  the  expense  by  half.  Take  your 
own  tent;  and  $20  will  not  exceed  "the  grub  box" 
contents  for  a  month.  Or  all  through  the  Rockies 
are  deserted  shacks,  mining  and  lumber  shanties, 


xiv  INTRODUCTION 

herders'  cabins,  horse  camps.  You  can  quarter  your- 
self in  one  of  these  for  nothing;  and  the  sole  ex- 
pense will  be  "  the  grub  box;  "  and  my  tin  trunk  for 
camp  cooking  has  never  cost  me  more  than  $50  a 
month  for  four  people.  Or  best  and  most  novel  ex- 
perience of  all  — along  White  Rock  Canon  of  the 
Rio  Grande,  in  Mesa  Verde  Park,  Colorado,  are 
thousands  of  plastered  caves,  the  homes  of  the  cliff 
dwellers.  You  reach  them  by  ladder.  There  is  no 
danger  of  wolves,  or  damp.  Camp  in  one  of  them 
for  nothing  wherever  the  water  in  the  brook  below 
happens  to  be  good.  Hundreds  of  archaeologists, 
who  come  from  Egypt,  Greece,  Italy,  England,  to 
visit  these  remains,  spend  their  summer  holiday  this 
way.  Why  can't  you?  Or  if  you  are  not  a  good 
adventurer  into  the  Unknown  alone,  then  join  the 
summer  school  that  goes  out  to  the  caves  from  Santa 
Fe  every  summer. 

Is  it  safe?  That  question  to  a  Westerner  is  a 
joke.  Safer,  much  safer,  than  in  any  Eastern  city! 
I  have  slept  in  ranch  cabins  of  the  White  Moun- 
tains, in  caves  of  the  cliff  dwellers  on  the  Rio  Grande, 
in  tents  on  the  Saskatchewan;  and  I  never  locked  a 
door,  because  there  wasn't  any  lock;  and  I  never  at- 
tempted to  bar  the  door,  because  there  wasn't  any 
need.  Can  you  say  as  much  of  New  York,  or  Chi- 
cago, or  Washington?  The  question  may  be  asked 
—  Will  this  kind  of  a  holiday  not  be  hot  in  summer? 
You  remember,  perhaps,  crossing  the  backbone  of  the 
Rockies  some  mid-summer,  when  nearly  everything 
inside  the  pullman  car  melted  into  a  jelly.  Yes,  it 


INTRODUCTION  xv 

will  be  hot  if  you  follow  the  beaten  trail ;  for  a  rail- 
road naturally  follows  the  lowest  grade.  But  if  you 
go  back  to  the  ranch  houses  of  the  Upper  Mesas  and 
of  foothills  and  canons,  you  will  be  from  7,000  to 
10,000  feet  above  sea  level,  and  will  need  winter 
wraps  each  night,  and  may  have  to  break  the 
ice  for  your  washing  water  in  the  morning  —  I 
did. 

Another  reason  why  so  many  Americans  do  not  see 
their  own  country  is  that  while  one  species  of  fool 
has  scared  away  holiday  seekers  by  tales  of  extor- 
tionate cost,  another  sort  of  fool  wisely  promulgates 
the  lie  —  a  lie  worn  shiny  from  repetition  —  that 
"  game  is  scarce  in  the  West.'*  "  No  more  big 
game  " —  and  your  romancer  leans  back  with  wise- 
acre air  to  let  that  lie  sink  in,  while  he  clears  his 
throat  to  utter  another — "trout  streams  all  fished 
out."  In  the  days  when  we  had  to  swallow  logic 
undigested  in  college,  we  had  it  impressed  upon  us 
that  one  single  specific  fact  was  sufficient  to  refute 
the  broadest  generality  that  was  ever  put  in  the  form 
of  a  syllogism.  Well,  then, —  for  a  few  facts  as  to 
that  "  no-game  "  lie ! 

In  one  hour  you  can  catch  in  the  streams  of  the 
Pecos,  or  the  Jemez,  or  the  White  Mountains,  or 
the  Upper  Sierras  of  California,  or  the  New  Glacier 
Park  of  the  North,  more  trout  than  you  can  put  on 
a  string.  If  you  want  confirmation  of  that  fact, 
write  to  the  Texas  Club  that  has  its  hunting  lodge 
opposite  Grass  Mountain,  and  they  will  send  you  the 
picture  of  one  hour's  trout  catch.  By  measurement, 


xvi  INTRODUCTION 

i 

the  string  is  longer  than  the  height  of  a  water  barrel ; 
and  these  were  fish  that  didn't  get  away. 

Last  year,  twenty-six  bear  were  shot  in  the  Sangre 
de  Christo  Canon  in  three  months. 

Two  years  ago,  mountain  lions  became  so  thick 
in  the  Pecos  that  hunters  were  hired  to  hunt  them 
for  bounty;  and  the  first  thing  that  happened  to  one 
of  the  hunters,  his  horse  was  throttled  and  killed  by 
a  mountain  lion,  though  his  little  spaniel  got  revenge 
by  treeing  four  lions  a  few  weeks  later,  and  the  hun- 
ter got  three  out  of  the  four. 

Near  Glorieta,  you  can  meet  a  rancher  who  last 
year  earned  $3,000  of  hunting  bounty  scrip,  if  he 
could  have  got  it  cashed. 

In  the  White  Mountains  last  year,  two  of  the  larg- 
est bucks  ever  known  in  the  Rockies  were  trailed  by 
every  hunter  of  note  and  trailed  in  vain.  Later, 
one  was  shot  out  of  season  by  stalking  behind  a 
burro;  but  the  other  still  haunts  the  canons  defiant 
of  repeater. 

From  the  caves  of  the  cliff-dwellers  along  the  Rio 
Grande,  you  can  nightly  hear  the  coyote  and  the  fox 
bark  as  they  barked  those  dim  stone  ages  when  the 
people  of  these  silent  caves  hunted  here. 

The  week  I  reached  Frijoles  Canon,  a  flock  of  wild 
turkeys  strutted  in  front  of  Judge  Abbott's  Ranch 
House  not  a  gun  length  from  the  front  door. 

The  morning  I  was  driving  over  the  Pajarito 
Mesa  home  from  the  cliff  caves,  we  disturbed  a  herd 
of  deer. 

Does  all  this  sound  as  if  game  was  depleted?     It 


INTRODUCTION  xvii 

is  if  you  follow  the  beaten  trail,  just  as  depleted  as 
it  would  be  if  you  tried  to  hunt  wild  turkey  down 
Broadway,  New  York;  but  it  isn't  if  you  know  where 
to  look  for  it.  Believe  me  —  though  it  may  sound 
a  truism  —  you  won't  find  big  game  in  hotel  rotundas 
or  pullman  cars. 

Or,  if  your  quest  is  not  hunting  but  studying  game, 
what  better  ground  for  observation  than  the  Wichita 
in  Oklahoma?  Here  a  National  Forest  has  been 
constituted  a  perpetual  breeding  ground  for  native 
American  game.  Over  twenty  buffalo  taken  from 
original  stock  in  the  New  York  Park  are  there  — 
back  on  their  native  heath;  and  there  are  two  or  three 
very  touching  things  about  those  old  furry  fellows 
taken  back  to  their  own  haunts.  In  New  York's 
parks,  they  were  gradually  degenerating  —  getting 
heavier,  less  active,  ceasing  to  shed  their  fur  annually. 
When  they  were  set  loose  in  the  Wichita  Game  Re- 
sort, they  looked  up,  sniffed  the  air  from  all  four 
quarters,  and  rambled  off  to  their  ancestral  pasture 
grounds  perfectly  at  home.  When  the  Comanches 
heard  that  the  buffalo  had  come  back  to  the  Wichita, 
the  whole  tribe  moved  in  a  body  and  camped  outside 
the  fourteen-foot  fence.  There  they  stayed  for  the 
better  part  of  a  week,  the  buffalo  and  the  Coman- 
ches, silently  viewing  each  other.  It  would  have 
been  worth  Mr.  Nature  Faker's  while  to  have  known 
their  mutual  thoughts. 

There  is  another  lie  about  not  holidaying  West, 
which  is  not  only  persistent  but  cruel.  When  the 
worker  is  a  health  as  well  as  rest  seeker,  he  is  told 


xviii  INTRODUCTION 

that  the  West  docs  not  want  him,  especially  if  he  is 
what  is  locally  called  "  a  lung-er;  "  and  there  is  just 
enough  truth  in  that  lie  to  make  it  persistent.  It  is 
true  the  consumptive  is  not  wanted  on  the  beaten 
trail,  in  the  big  general  hotel,  in  the  train  where 
other  people  want  draughts  of  air,  but  he  can't  stand 
them.  On  the  beaten  trail,  he  is  a  danger  both  to 
himself  and  to  others  —  especially  if  he  hasn't  money 
and  may  fall  a  burden  on  the  community;  but  that  is 
only  a  half  truth  which  is  usually  a  lie.  Let  the 
other  half  be  known!  All  through  the  West  along 
the  backbone  of  the  Rockies,  from  Montana  to 
Texas,  especially  in  New  Mexico  and  Arizona,  are 
the  tent  cities  —  communities  of  health  seekers  living 
in  half-boarded  tents,  or  mosquito-wired  cabins  that 
can  be  steam-heated  at  night.  There  are  literally 
thousands  of  such  tent  dwellers  all  through  the 
Rocky  Mountain  States ;  and  the  cost  is  as  you  make 
it.  If  you  go  to  a  sanitarium  tent  city,  you  will  have 
to  pay  all  the  way  from  $15  to  $25  a  week  for 
house,  board,  nurse,  medicine  and  doctor's  attend- 
ance ;  but  if  you  buy  your  own  portable  house  and  do 
your  own  catering,  the  cost  will  be  just  what  you 
make  it  A  house  will  cost  $50  to  $100;  a  tent,  $10 
to  $20. 

Still  another  baneful  lie  that  keeps  the  American 
from  seeing  America  first  is  that  our  New  World 
West  lacks  "human  interest;"  lacks  "the  pictur- 
esqueness  of  the  shepherds  in  Spain  and  Switzer- 
land," for  instance;  lacks  "  the  historic  marvels  "  of 
church  and  monument  and  relic. 


INTRODUCTION  xix 

If  there  be  any  degree  in  lies,  this  is  the  pastmaster 
of  them  all.  Will  you  tell  me  why  "  the  human  in- 
terest "  of  a  legend  about  Dick  Turpin's  head  fes- 
tering on  Newgate,  England,  is  any  greater  to  Amer- 
icans than  the  truth  about  Black  Jack  of  Texas, 
whose  head  flew  off  into  the  crowd,  when  the  sup- 
port was  removed  from  his  feet  and  he  was  hanged 
down  in  New  Mexico?  Dick  Turpin  was  a  high- 
wayman. Black  Jack  was  a  lone-hand  train  robber. 
Will  you  tell  me  why  the  outlaws  of  the  borderland 
between  England  and  Scotland  are  more  interesting 
to  Americans  than  the  bands  of  outlaws  who  used 
to  frequent  Horse-Thief  Canon  up  the  Pecos,  or 
took  possession  of  the  cliff-dwellers'  caves  on  the 
Rio  Grande  after  the  Civil  War?  Why  are  Copt 
shepherds  in  Egypt  more  picturesque  than  descend- 
ants of  the  Aztecs  herding  countless  moving  masses 
of  sheep  on  our  own  sky-line,  lilac-misty,  Upper 
Mesas?  What  is  the  difference  in  quality  value  be- 
tween a  donkey  in  Spain  trotting  to  market  and  a 
burro  in  New  Mexico  standing  on  the  plaza  before 
a  palace  where  have  ruled  eighty  different  governors, 
three  different  nations?  Why  are  skeletons  and 
relics  taken  from  Pompeii  more  interesting  than  the 
dust-crumbled  bodies  lying  in  the  caves  of  our  own 
cliffs  wrapped  in  cloth  woven  long  before  Europe 
knew  the  art  of  weaving?  Why  is  the  Sphinx 
more  wonderful  to  us  than  the  Great  Stone  Face 
carved  on  the  rock  of  a  cliff  near  Cochiti,  New  Mex- 
ico, carved  before  the  Pharaohs  reigned;  or  the  stone 
lions  of  an  Assyrian  ruin  more  marvelous  than  the 


xx  INTRODUCTION 

two  great  stone  lions  carved  at  Cochiti  ?  When  you 
find  a  church  in  England  dating  before  William  the 
Conqueror,  you  may  smack  your  lips  with  the  zest 
of  the  antiquarian;  but  you'll  find  in  New  Mexico 
not  far  from  Santa  Fe  ruins  of  a  church  —  at  the 
Gates  of  the  Waters,  Guardian  of  the  Waters  — 
that  was  a  pagan  ruin  a  thousand  years  old  when 
the  Spaniards  came  to  America. 

You  may  hunt  up  plaster  cast  reproduction  of 
reptilian  monsters  in  the  Kensington  Museum,  Lon- 
don; but  you  will  find  the  real  skeleton  of  the  gen- 
tleman himself,  with  pictures  of  the  three-toed  horse 
on  the  rocks,  and  legends  of  a  Plumed  Serpent  not 
unlike  the  wary  fellow  who  interviewed  Eve  —  all 
right  here  in  your  own  American  Southwest,  with  the 
difference  in  favor  of  the  American  legend;  for  the 
Satanic  wriggler,  who  walked  into  the  Garden  on  his 
tail,  went  to  deceive;  whereas  the  Plumed  Serpent 
of  New  Mexican  legend  came  to  guard  the  pools 
and  the  springs. 

To  be  sure,  there  are  400,000  miles  of  motor 
roads  in  Europe;  but  isn't  it  worth  while  to  climb  a 
few  mountains  in  America  by  motor?  That  is  what 
you  can  do  following  the  u  Camino  Real "  from 
Texas  to  Wyoming,  or  crossing  the  mountains  of 
New  Mexico  by  the  great  Scenic  Highway  built  for 
motors  to  the  very  snow  tops. 

And  if  you  take  to  studying  native  Indian  life,  at 
Laguna,  at  Acoma,  at  Taos,  you  will  find  yourself 
in  such  a  maze  of  the  picturesque  and  the  legendary 
as  you  cannot  find  anywhere  else  in  the  wide  world 


An  Indian  girl  of  Isleta,  New  Mexico,  carrying  a  water  jar 


INTRODUCTION  xxi 

but  America.  This  is  a  story  by  itself  —  a  beautiful 
one,  also  in  spots  a  funny  one.  For  instance,  one 
summer  a  woman  of  international  fame  from  Ox- 
ford, England,  took  quarters  in  one  of  the  pueblos  at 
Santa  Clara  or  thereabout  to  study  Indian  arts  and 
crafts.  One  night  in  her  adobe  quarters,  her  or- 
derly British  soul  was  aroused  by  such  a  dire  din  of 
shouting,  fighting,  screams,  as  she  thought  could  come 
only  from  some  inferno  of  crime.  She  sprang  out 
of  bed  and  dashed  across  the  placito  in  her  night- 
dress to  her  guardian  protector  in  the  person  of  an 
old  Indian.  He  ran  through  the  dark  to  see  what 
the  matter  was,  while  she  stood  in  hiding  of  the  wall 
shadows  curdling  in  horror  of  "  bluggy  deeds." 

"  Pah,"  said  the  old  fellow  coming  back,  "  dat 
not'ing  I  Young  man,  he  git  marry  an'  dey  —  how 
you  call  ?  —  chiv-ar-ee-heem." 

'  Then,  what  are  you  laughing  at?  "  demanded 
the  irate  British  dame ;  for  she  could  not  help  seeing 
that  the  old  fellow  was  literally  doubling  in  suffo- 
cated laughter.  "  How  dare  you  laugh?  " 

"  I  laugh,  Mees,"  he  sputtered  out,  "  'cos  you 
scare  me  so  bad  when  you  call,  I  jomp  in  my  coat 
mistake  for  my  pants.  Dat's  all." 

It  would  pay  to  cultivate  a  little  home  sentiment, 
wouldn't  it?  It  would  pay  to  let  a  little  daylight  in 
on  the  abysmal  blank  regarding  the  wonder-land  of 
our  own  world  —  wouldn't  it? 

I  don't  know  whether  the  affectation  recognized 
as  "  the  foreign  pose  "  comes  foremost  or  hinder- 


xxii  INTRODUCTION 

most  as  a  cause  of  this  neglect  of  the  wonders  of  our 
own  land.  When  you  go  to  our  own  Western  Won- 
der Land,  you  can't  say  you  have  been  abroad  with 
a  great  long  capital  A;  and  it  is  wonderful  what  a 
paying  thing  that  pose  is  in  a  harvest  of  "  fooleries." 
There  is  a  well-known  case  of  an  American  author, 
who  tried  his  hand  on  delineating  American  life  and 
was  severely  let  alone  because  he  was  too  —  not 
abroad,  but  broad.  He  dropped  his  own  name,  as- 
sumed the  pose  of  a  grand  dame  familiar  with  the 
inner  penetralia  and  sacred  secrets  of  the  exclusive 
circle  of  the  American  Colony  in  Paris.  His  books 
have  "  gone  off  "  like  hot  cross  buns.  Before,  they 
were  broad.  Now  they  are  abroad;  and,  like  the 
tourist  tickets,  they  are  selling  two  to  one. 

The  stock  excuse  among  foreign  poseurs  for  the 
two  to  one  preference  of  Europe  to  America  is  that 
"  America  lacks  the  picturesque,  the  human,  the  his- 
toric." A  straightforward  falsehood  you  can  al- 
ways answer;  but  an  implied  falsehood  masking  be- 
hind knowledge,  which  is  a  vacuum,  and  superiority, 
which  is  pretense  —  is  another  matter.  Let  us  take 
the  dire  and  damning  deficiencies  of  America ! 

"  America  lacks  the  picturesque."  Did  the  an- 
cient dwelling  of  the  Stone  Age  sound  to  you  as  if  it 
lacked  the  picturesque?  I  could  direct  you  to  fifty 
such  picturesque  spots  in  the  Southwest  alone. 

There  is  the  Enchanted  Mesa,  with  its  sister  mesa 
of  Acoma  —  islands  of  rock,  sheer  precipice  of  yel- 
low tufa  for  hundreds  of  feet  —  amid  the  Desert 
sand,  light  shimmering  like  a  stage  curtain,  herds  ex- 


INTRODUCTION  xxiii 

aggerated  in  huge,  grotesque  mirage  against  the  lav- 
ender light,  and  Indian  riders,  brightly  clad  and  pic- 
turesque as  Arabs,  scouring  across  the  plain;  all  this 
reachable  two  hours*  drive  from  a  main  railroad. 
Or  there  are  the  three  Mesas  of  the  Painted  Desert, 
cities  on  the  flat  mountain  table  lands,  ancient  as  the 
Aztecs,  overlooking  such  a  roll  of  mountain  and 
desert  and  forest  as  the  Tempter  could  not  show 
beneath  the  temple.  Or,  there  is  the  White  House, 
an  ancient  ruin  of  Canon  de  Chelly  (Shay)  forty 
miles  from  Fort  Defiance,  where  you  could  put  a 
dozen  White  Houses  of  Washington. 

"  But,"  your  European  protagonist  declares,  "  I 
don't  mean  the  ancient  and  the  primeval.  I  mean 
the  modern  peopled  hamlet  type."  All  right! 
What  is  the  matter  with  Santa  Fe?  Draw  a  circle 
from  New  Orleans  up  through  Santa  Fe  to  Santa 
Barbara,  California;  and  you'll  find  old  missions 
galore,  countless  old  towns  of  which  Santa  Fe,  with 
its  twin-towered  Cathedral  and  old  San  Miguel 
Church,  is  a  type.  Santa  Fe,  itself,  is  a  bit  of  old 
Spain  set  down  in  mosaic  in  hustling,  bustling  Amer- 
ica. There  is  the  Governor's  Palace,  where  three 
different  nations  have  held  sway;  and  there  is  the 
Plaza,  where  the  burros  trot  to  market  under  loads 
of  wood  picturesque  as  any  donkeys  in  Spain;  and 
there  is  the  old  Exchange  Hotel,  the  end  of  the  Santa 
Fe  Trail,  where  Stephen  B.  Elkins  came  in  cowhide 
boots  forty  years  ago  to  carve  out  a  colossal  fortune. 
At  one  end  of  a  main  thoroughfare,  you  can  see  the 
site  of  the  old  Spanish  Gareta  prison,  in  the  walls  of 


xxiv  INTRODUCTION 

which  bullets  were  found  embedded  in  human  hair. 
And  if  you  want  a  little  Versailles  of  retreat  away 
from  the  braying  of  the  burros  and  of  the  humans, 
away  from  the  dust  of  street  and  of  small  talk  — 
then  of  a  May  day  when  the  orchard  is  in  bloom  and 
the  air  alive  with  the  song  of  the  bees,  go  to  the  old 
French  garden  of  the  late  Bishop  Lamy!  Through 
the  cobwebby  spring  foliage  shines  the  gleam  of  the 
snowy  peaks;  and  the  air  is  full  of  dreams  precious 
as  the  apple  bloom. 

What  was  the  other  charge?  Oh,  yes  —  "lacks 
the  human,"  whatever  that  means.  Why  are  leg- 
ends of  border  forays  in  Scotland  more  thrilling  than 
true  tales  of  robber  dens  in  Horse-Thief  Canon  and 
the  cliff  houses  of  Flagstaff  and  the  Frijoles,  where 
renegades  of  the  Civil  War  used  to  hide?  Why  are 
the  multi-colored  peasant  workers  of  Brittany  or  Bel- 
gium more  interesting  than  the  gayly  dressed  peons 
of  New  Mexico,  or  the  Navajo  boys  scouring  up  and 
down  the  sandy  arroyos  ?  Why  is  the  story  of  Jack 
Cade  any  more  "  human  "  than  the  tragedy  of  the 
three  Vermont  boys,  Stott,  Scott  and  Wilson,  hanged 
in  the  Tonto  Basin  for  horses  they  did  not  steal 
in  order  that  their  assassins  might  pocket  $5,000 
of  money  which  the  young  fellows  had  brought 
out  from  the  East  with  them?  Why  are  not  all 
these  personages  of  good  repute  and  ill  repute  as 
famous  to  American  folklore  hunters  as  Robin  Hood 
or  any  other  legendary  heroes  of  the  Old  World? 

Driven  to  the  last  redoubt,  your  protagonist  for 
Europe  against  America  usually  assumes  the  air  of 


INTRODUCTION  xxv 

superiority  supposed  to  be  the  peculiar  prerogative 
of  the  gods  of  Olympus,  and  declares :  '  Yes  — 
but  America  lacks  the  history  and  the  art  of  the  old 
associations  in  Europe." 

"Lacks  history?"  Go  back  fifty  years  in  our 
own  West  to  the  transition  period  from  fur  trade 
to  frontier,  from  Spanish  don  living  in  idle  baronial 
splendor  to  smart  Yankeedom  invading  the  old  ex- 
clusive domain  in  cowhide  boots!  Go  back  another 
fifty  years !  You  are  in  the  midst  of  American  feu- 
dalism —  fur  lords  of  {he  wilderness  ruling  domains 
the  area  of  a  Europe,  Spanish  Conquistadores  march- 
ing through  the  desert  heat  clad  cap-a-pie  in  burnished 
mail;  Governor  Prince's  collection  at  Santa  Fe  has 
one  of  those  cuirasses  dug  up  in  New  Mexico  with 
the  bullet  hole  through  the  metal  right  above  the 
heart.  Another  fifty  years  back — and  the  century 
war  for  a  continent  with  the  Indians,  the  downing 
of  the  old  civilization  of  America  before  a  sort  of 
Christian  barbarism,  the  sword  in  one  hand,  the  cross 
in  the  other,  and  behind  the  mounted  troops  the  big 
iron  chest  for  the  gold  —  iron  chests  that  you  can 
see  to  this  day  among  the  Spanish  families  of  the 
Southwest,  rusted  from  burial  in  time  of  war,  but 
strong  yet  as  in  the  centuries  when  guarded  by  secret 
springs  such  iron  treasure  boxes  hid  all  the  gold 
and  the  silver  of  some  noble-  family  in  New  Spain. 
When  you  go  back  beyond  the  days  of  New  Spain, 
you  are  amid  a  civilization  as  ancient  as  Egypt's  — 
an  era  that  can  be  compared  only  to  the  myth  age 
of  the  Norse  Gods,  when  Loki,  Spirit  of  Evil,  smiled 


xxvi  INTRODUCTION 

with  contempt  at  man's  poor  efforts  to  invade  the 
Realm  of  Death.  It  was  the  age  when  puny  men 
of  the  Stone  Era  were  alternately  chasing  south  be- 
fore the  glacial  drift  and  returning  north  as  the 
waters  receded,  when  huge  leviathans  wallowed  amid 
sequoia  groves;  and  if  man  had  domesticated  crea- 
tures, they  were  three-toed  horses,  and  wolf  dogs, 
and  wild  turkeys  and  quail.  Curiously  enough,  rem- 
nants of  some  sort  of  domesticated  creatures  are 
found  in  the  cave  men's  houses,  centuries  before  the 
coming  of  horses  and  cattle  and  sheep  with  the  Span- 
ish. The  trouble  is,  up  to  the  present  when  men 
like  Curtis  and  dear  old  Bandelier  and  Burbank,  and 
the  whole  staff  of  the  Smithsonian  and  the  School 
of  Santa  Fe  have  gone  to  work,  we  have  not  taken 
the  trouble  in  America  to  gather  up  the  prehistoric 
legends  and  ferret  out  their  race  meaning.  We  have 
fallen  too  completely  in  the  last  century  under  the 
blight  of  evolution,  which  presupposes  that  these  cave 
races  were  a  sort  of  simian-jawed,  long-clawed,  gib- 
bering apes  spending  half  their  time  up  trees  throw- 
ing stones  on  the  heads  of  the  other  apes  below,  and 
the  other  half  of  their  time  either  licking  their  chops 
in  gore  or  dragging  wives  back  to  caves  by  the  hair 
of  their  heads.  You  remember  Kipling's  poem  on 
the  neolithic  man,  and  Jack  London's  fiction.  Now 
as  a  matter  of  fact  —  which  is  a  bit  disturbing  to  all 
these  accretions  of  pseudo-science  —  the  remains  of 
these  cave  people  don't  show  them  to  have  been  sim- 
ian-jawed apes  at  all.  They  had  woven  clothing 
when  our  ancestors  were  a  bit  liable  to  Anthony 


INTRODUCTION  xxvii 

Comstock's  activities  as  to  clothes.  They  had  dec- 
orated pottery  ware  of  which  we  have  lost  the  pig- 
ments, and  a  knowledge  of  irrigation  which  would 
be  unique  in  apes,  and  a  technique  in  basketry  that  I 
never  knew  a  monkey  to  possess.  Some  day,  when 
the  evolutionary  piffle  has  passed,  we'll  study  out  these 
prehistoric  legends  and  their  racial  meaning. 

As  to  the  "lack  of  art,"  pray  wake  up!  The 
late  Edwin  Abbey  declared  that  the  most  hopeful 
school  of  art  in  America  was  the  School  of  the  South- 
west. Look  up  Lotave's  mural  drawings  at  Santa 
Fe,  or  Lungrun's  wonderful  desert  pictures,  or  Mo- 
ran's  or  Gamble's,  or  Harmon's  Spanish  scenes  — 
then  talk  about  "  lack  of  decadent  art "  if  you  will, 
but  don't  talk  about  "lack  of  art."  Why,  in  the 
ranch  house  of  Lorenzo  Hubbell,  the  great  Navajo 
trader,  you'll  find  a  $200,000  collection  of  purely 
Southwestern  pictures. 

How  many  of  the  two  to  one  protagonists  of  Eu- 
rope know,  for  instance,  that  scenic  motor  highways 
already  run  to  the  very  edge  of  the  grandest  scenery 
in  America?  You  can  motor  now  from  Texas  to 
Wyoming,  up  above  10,000  feet  much  of  it,  above 
cloud  line,  above  timber  line,  over  the  leagueless 
sage-bush  plains,  in  and  out  of  the  great  yellow  pine 
forests,  past  Cloudcroft  —  the  skytop  resort  —  up 
through  the  orchard  lands  of  the  Rio  Grande,  across 
the  very  backbone  of  the  Rockies  over  the  Santa  Fe 
Ranges  and  on  north  up  to  the  Garden  of  the  Gods 
and  all  the  wonders  of  Colorado's  National  Park. 


xxviii  INTRODUCTION 

With  the  exception  of  a  very  bad  break  in  the  White 
Mountains  of  Arizona,  you  can  motor  West  past  the 
southern  edge  of  the  Painted  Desert,  past  Laguna 
and  Acoma  and  the  Enchanted  Mesa,  past  the  Petri- 
fied Forests,  where  a  deluge  of  sand  and  flood  has 
buried  a  sequoia  forest  and  transmuted  the  beauty 
of  the  tree's  life  into  the  beauty  of  the  jewel,  into 
bars  and  beams  and  spars  of  agate  and  onyx  the 
color  of  the  rainbow.  Then,  before  going  on  down 
to  California,  you  can  swerve  into  Grand  Canon, 
where  the  gods  of  fire  and  flood  have  jumbled  and 
tumbled  the  peaks  of  Olympus  dyed  blood-red  into 
a  swimming  canon  of  lavender  and  primrose  light 
deep  as  the  highest  peaks  of  the  Rockies. 

In  California,  you  can  either  motor  up  along  the 
coast  past  all  the  old  Spanish  Missions,  or  go  in  be- 
hind the  first  ridge  of  mountains  and  motor  along  the 
edge  of  the  Big  Trees  and  the  Yosemite  and  Tahoe. 
You  can't  take  your  car  into  these  Parks;  first,  be- 
cause  you  are  not  allowed;  second,  because  the  risks 
of  the  road  do  not  permit  it  even  if  you  were  allowed. 

Is  it  safe?  As  I  said  before,  that  question  is  a 
joke.  I  can  answer  only  from  a  life-time  knowledge 
of  pretty  nearly  all  parts  of  the  West — and  that 
from  a  woman's  point  of  view.  Believe  me  the  days 
of  "  shootin'  irons  "  and  "  faintin'  females  "  are  for- 
ever past,  except  in  the  undergraduate's  salad  dreams. 
You  are  safer  in  the  cave  dwellings  of  the  Stone 
Age,  in  the  Pajarito  Plateau  of  the  cliff  "  bird  peo- 
ple," in  the  Painted  Desert,  among  the  Indians  of 


INTRODUCTION  xxix 

the  Navajo  Reserve  than  you  are  in  Broadway,  New 
York,  or  Piccadilly,  London.  I  would  trust  a  young 
friend  of  mine  —  boy  or  girl  —  quicker  to  the  West- 
ern environment  than  the  Eastern.  You  can  get  into 
mischief  in  the  West  if  you  hunt  for  it;  but  the  mis- 
chief doesn't  come  out  and  hunt  you.  Also,  danger 
spots  are  self-evident  on  precipices  of  the  Western 
wilds.  They  aren't  self-evident;  danger  spots  are 
glazed  and  paved  to  the  edges  over  which  youth 
goes  to  smash  in  the  East. 

What  about  cost?     Aye,  there's  the  rub! 

First,  there's  the  steamboat  ticket  to  Europe,  about 
the  same  price  as  or  more  than  the  average  round  trip 
ticket  to  the  Coast  and  back;  but  —  please  note, 
please  note  well  —  the  agent  who  sells  the  steamboat 
ticket  gets  from  forty  to  100  per  cent,  bigger  com- 
mission on  it  than  the  agent  who  sells  the  railroad 
tickets;  so  the  man  who  is  an  agent  for  Europe  can 
afford  to  advertise  from  forty  to  100  per  cent,  more 
than  the  man  who  sells  the  purely  American  ticket. 

Secondly,  European  hotel  men  are  adepts  at 
catering  to  the  lure  of  the  American  sightseer.  (Of 
course  they  are:  it's  worth  one  hundred  to  two  hun- 
dred million  dollars  to  them  a  year.)  In  the  Amer- 
ican West,  everybody  is  busy.  Except  for  the  real 
estate  man,  they  don't  care  one  iota  whether  you 
come  or  stay. 

Thirdly,  when  you  go  to  Europe,  a  thousand  hands 
are  thrust  out  to  point  you  the  way  to  the  interesting 
places.  Incidentally,  also,  a  thousand  hands  are 


xxx  INTRODUCTION 

thrust  out  to  pick  your  pocket,  or  at  least  relieve  it  of 
any  superfluous  weight.  In  our  West,  who  cares  a 
particle  what  you  do;  or  who  will  point  you  the  way? 
The  hotels  are  expensive  and  for  the  most  part  lo- 
cated in  the  most  expensive  zone  —  the  commercial 
center.  It  is  only  when  you  get  out  of  the  expense 
zone  away  from  commercial  centers  and  railway,  that 
you  can  live  at  $i  or  $2  a  day,  or  if  you  have  your 
own  tent  at  fifty  cents  a  day;  but  it  isn't  to  the  real  es- 
tate agent's  interests  to  have  you  go  away  from  the 
commercial  center  or  expense  zone.  Who  is  there 
to  tell  you  what  or  where  to  see  off  the  line  of  heat 
and  tips?  Outside  the  National  Park  wardens  and 
National  Forest  Rangers,  there  isn't  anyone. 

How,  then,  are  you  to  manage?  Frankly,  I 
never  knew  of  either  monkeys  or  men  accomplishing 
anything  except  in  one  way  —  just  going  out  and 
doing  it.  Choose  what  you  want  to  see;  and  go 
there!  The  local  railroad  agent,  the  local  Forest 
Ranger,  the  local  ranch  house,  will  tell  you  the  rest; 
and  naturally,  when  you  go  into  the  wilderness,  don't 
leave  all  your  courtesy  and  circumspection  and  com- 
mon-sense back  in  town.  Equipped  with  those  three, 
you  can  "  See  America  First,"  and  see  it  cheaply. 


CHAPTER  I 

THE   NATIONAL   FORESTS,    A   SUMMER   PLAYGROUND 
FOR  THE  PEOPLE 

IF  a  health  resort  and  national  playground  were 
discovered  guaranteed  to  kill  care,  to  stab  apathy 
into  new  life,  to  enlarge  littleness  and  slay  list- 
lessness  and  set  the  human  spirit  free  from  the 
nagging  worries  and  toil-wear  that  make  you  feel 
like  a  washed-out  rag  at  the  end  of  a  humdrum 
year  —  imagine  the  stampede  of  the  lame  and  the 
halt  in  body  and  spirit;  the  railroad  excursions  and 
reduced  fares;  the  disputations  of  the  physicians  and 
the  rage  of  the  thought-ologists  at  present  coining 
money  rejuvenating  neurotic  humanity! 

Yet  such  a  national  playground  has  been  discov- 
ered; and  it  isn't  in  Europe,  where  statisticians  com- 
pute that  Americans  yearly  spend  from  a  quarter  to 
half  a  billion  dollars;  and  it  isn't  the  Coast-to-Coast 
trip  which  the  president  of  a  transcontinental  told 
me  at  least  a  hundred  thousand  people  a  year  tra- 
verse. A  health  resort  guaranteed  to  banish  care, 
to  stab  apathy,  to  enlarge  littleness,  to  slay  listless- 
ness,  would  pretty  nearly  put  the  thought-ologists 
out  of  commission.  Yet  such  a  summer  resort  exists 
at  the  very  doors  of  every  American  capable  of 
scraping  together  a  few  hundred  dollars  —  $200  at 


2  THE  NATIONAL  FORESTS 

the  least,  $400  at  the  most.  It  exists  in  that  "  twi- 
light zone  "  of  dispute  and  strong  language  and  pea- 
nut politics  known  as  the  National  Forests. 

In  America,  we  have  foolishly  come  to  regard 
National  Forests  as  solely  allied  with  conservation 
and  politics.  That  is  too  narrow.  National  For- 
ests stand  for  much  more.  They  stand  for  a 
national  playground  and  all  that  means  for  national 
health  and  sanity  and  joy  in  the  exuberant  life  of  the 
clean  out-of-doors.  In  Germany,  the  forests  are  not 
only  a  source  of  great  revenue  in  cash;  they  are  a 
source  of  greater  revenue  in  health.  They  are  a 
holiday  playground.  In  America,  the  playground 
exists,  the  most  wonderful,  the  most  beautiful  play- 
ground in  the  whole  world  —  and  the  most  acces- 
sible ;  but  we  haven't  yet  discovered  it. 

Of  the  three  or  four  million  people  who  have 
attended  the  Pacific  Coast  Expositions  of  the  past 
ten  years,  it  is  a  safe  wage  that  half  went,  not  to  see 
the  Exposition  ( for  people  from  a  radius  round  Chi- 
cago and  Jamestown  and  Buffalo  had  already  seen  a 
great  Exposition)  but  they  went  to  see  the  Exposi- 
tion as  an  exponent  of  the  Great  West.  How  much 
of  the  Great  West  did  they  really  see?  They  saw 
the  Alaska  Exhibit.  Well  —  the  Alaska  Exhibit 
was  afterwards  shown  in  New  York.  They  saw  the 
special  buildings  assigned  to  the  special  Western 
States.  Well  —  the  special  Western  States  had 
special  buildings  at  the  other  expositions.  What  else 


THE  NATIONAL  FORESTS  3 

of  the  purely  West  they  saw,  I  shall  give  in  the 
words  of  three  travelers: 

"  Been  a  great  trip  "  (Two  Chicagoans  talking  in 
duet) .  ;<  We've  seen  everything  and  stopped  off 
everywhere.  We  stopped  at  Denver  and  Salt  Lake 
and  Los  Angeles  and  San  Francisco  and  Portland 
and  Seattle !  " 

"  What  did  you  do  at  these  places?  " 

"  Took  a  taxi  and  saw  the  sights,  drove  through 
the  parks  and  so  on.  Saw  all  the  residences  and 
public  buildings.  Been  a  great  trip.  Tell  you  the 
West  is  going  ahead." 

"  It  has  been  a  detestable  trip  "  (A  New  Yorker 
relieving  surcharged  feelings).  "  It  has  been  a  skin 
game  from  start  to  finish,  pullman,  baggage,  hotels, 
everything.  And  how  much  of  the  West  have  we 
really  seen?  Not  a  glimpse  of  it.  We  had  all  seen 
these  Western  cities  before.  They  are  not  the  West. 
They  are  bits  of  the  East  taken  up  and  set  down  in 
the  West.  How  is  the  Easterner  to  see  the  West? 
It  isn't  seeing  it  to  go  flying  through  these  prairie 
stations.  Settlement  and  real  life  and  wild  life  are 
always  back  from  the  railroad.  How  are  we  to  get 
out  and  see  that  unless  we  can  pay  ten  dollars  a  day 
for  guides?  I  don't  call  it  seeing  the  mountains  to 
ride  on  a  train  through  the  easiest  passes  and  sleep 
through  most  of  them.  Tell  us  how  we  are  to  get 
out  and  see  and  experience  the  real  thing?  " 

"  H'm,  talk  about  seeing  the  West  '  (T.bis  time 
from  a  Texas  banker).  "Only  time  we  got  away 


4  THE  NATIONAL  FORESTS 

from  the  excursion  party  was  when  a  land  boomster 
took  us  up  the  river  to  see  an  irrigation  project. 
That  wasn't  seeing  the  West.  That  was  a  buy-and- 
sell  proposition  same  as  we  have  at  home.  What 
I  want  to  know  is  how  to  get  away  from  that. 
That  boomster  fellow  was  an  Easterner,  any- 
way." 

Which  of  these  three  really  found  the  playground 
each  was  seeking?  Not  the  duet  that  went  round 
the  cities  in  a  sightseeing  car  and  judged  the  West 
from  hotel  rotundas.  Not  the  New  Yorker,  who 
saw  the  prairie  towns  fly  past  the  car  windows.  Not 
the  Texans  who  were  guided  round  a  real  estate  pro- 
ject by  an  Eastern  land  boomster.  And  each" 
wanted  to  find  the  real  thing  —  had  paid  money  to 
find  a  holiday  playground,  to  forget  care  and  stab 
apathy  and  enlarge  life.  And  each  complained  of 
the  extortionate  charges  on  every  side  in  the  city  life. 
And  two  out  of  three  went  back  a  little  disappointed 
that  they  had  not  seen  the  fabled  wonders  of  the 
West  —  the  big  trees,  the  peaks  at  close  range,  the 
famous  canons,  the  mountain  lakes,  the  natural 
bridges.  When  I  tried  to  explain  to  the  New 
Yorker  that  at  a  cost  of  one-tenth  what  the  big  hotels 
charge,  you  could  go  straight  into  the  heart  of  the 
mountain  western  wilds,  whether  you  are  a  man, 
woman,  child,  or  group  of  all  three  —  could  go 
straight  out  to  the  fabled  wonders  of  big  trees  and 
mountain  lakes  and  snowy  peaks  —  I  was  greeted 
with  that  peculiarly  New  Yorky  look  suggestive  of 
Ananias  and  De  Rougement. 


THE  NATIONAL  FORESTS  5 

Sadder  is  the  case  of  the  invalid  migrating  West. 
He  has  come  with  high  hopes  looking  for  the 
national  health  resort.  Does  he  find  it?  Not  once 
in  a  thousand  cases.  If  health  seekers  have  money, 
they  take  a  private  house  in  the  city,  where  the  best 
of  air  is  at  its  worst;  but  many  invalids  are  scarce  of. 
money,  and  come  seeking  the  health  resort  at  great 
pecuniary  sacrifice.  Do  they  find  it?  Certainly  not 
knocking  from  boarding  house  to  boarding  house  and 
hotel  to  hotel,  re-infecting  themselves  with  their  own 
germs  till  the  very  telephone  booths  have  to  be 
guarded.  At  one  famous  "  lung  "  city  where  I  stayed, 
I  heard  three  invalids  coughing  life  away  along  the 
corridor  where  my  room  happened  to  be.  The 
charge  for  those  stuffy  rooms  was  $2  and  $3  and  $5 
a  day  without  meals.  At  a  cost  of  $10  for  train 
fare,  I  went  out  to  one  of  the  National  Forests  —  the 
pass  over  the  Divide  11,000  feet,  the  village  center 
of  the  Forest  8,000  feet  above  sea  level,  the  charge 
with  meals  at  the  hotel  $10  a  week.  Better  still, 
$10  for  a  roomy  tent,  $1.50  for  a  camp  stove  and  as 
much  or  as  little  as  you  like  for  a  fur  rug,  and  the 
cost  of  meals  would  have  been  seventy-five  cents  a 
day  at  the  hotel,  seventy-five  cents  for  life  in  air  that 
was  almost  constant  sunshine,  air  as  pure  and  life- 
giving  as  the  sun  on  Creation's  first  day.  That  alti- 
tude would  probably  not  suit  all  invalids  —  that  is 
for  a  doctor  to  say ;  but  certainly,  whether  one  is  out 
for  health  or  play,  that  regimen  is  cheaper  and  more 
life-giving  than  a  stuffy  hotel  at  $2,  $3  and  $5  a  day 
for  a  room  alone. 


6  THE  NATIONAL  FORESTS 

It  is  incredible  when  you  come  to  think  of  it. 
Here  is  a  nation  of  ninety  million  people  scouring 
the  earth  for  a  playground;  and  there  is  an  undis- 
covered playground  in  its  own  back  yard,  the  most 
wonderful  playground  of  mountain  and  forest  and 
lake  in  the  whole  world;  a  playground  in  actual  area 
half  the  size  of  a  Germany,  or  France,  with  wonders 
of  cave  and  waterway  and  peak  unknown  to  Ger- 
many or  France.  What  are  the  railroads  thinking 
about?  If  three  million  people  visited  an  exposition 
to  see  the  West,  how  many  would  yearly  visit  the 
National  Forests  if  the  railroads  granted  facilities, 
and  the  ninety  million  Americans  knew  how?  It  is 
absurd  to  regard  the  National  Forests  purely  as 
timber;  and  timber  for  politics !  They  are  a  nation's 
playground  and  health  resort;  and  one  of  these  times 
will  come  a  Peary  or  an  Abruzzi  discovering  them. 
Then  we'll  give  him  a  prize  and  begin  going. 

You  will  not  find  Newport;  and  you  will  not  find 
Lenox;  and  you  will  not  find  Saratoga  in  the 
National  Forests.  Neither  will  you  find  a  dress 
parade  except  the  painter's  brush  with  its  vesture  of 
flame  in  the  upper  alpine  meadows.  And  you  will 
not  find  gaping  on-lookers  to  break  down  fences  and 
report  your  doings,  unless  it  be  a  Douglas  squirrel 
swearing  at  you  for  coming  too  near  his  cache  of  pine 
cones  at  the  foot  of  some  giant  conifer.  There  is 
small  noise  of  things  doing  in  the  National  Forests; 
but  there  is  a  great  tinkling  of  waters;  and  there  are 
many  voices  of  rills  with  a  roar  of  flood  torrents  at 


THE  NATIONAL  FORESTS  7 

rain  time,  or  thunder  of  avalanche  when  the  snows 
come  over  a  far  ridge  in  spray  fine  as  a  waterfall. 
In  fair  weather,  you  may  spare  yourself  the  trouble 
of  a  tent  and  camp  under  a  stretch  of  sky  hung  with 
stars,  resinous  of  balsams,  spiced  with  the  life  of  the 
cinnamon  smells  and  the  ozone  tang.  There  will  be 
lakes  of  light  as  well  as  lakes  of  water,  and  an  all-day 
diet  of  condensed  sunbeams  every  time  you  take  a 
breath.  Your  bed  will  be  hemlock  boughs  —  be 
sure  to  lay  the  branch-end  out  and  the  soft  end  in  or 
you'll  dream  of  sleeping  transfixed  and  bayoneted  on 
a  nine  foot  redwood  stump.  Sage  brush  smells  and 
cedar  odors,  you  will  have  without  paying  for  a  cedar 
chest.  If  you  want  softer  bed  and  mixed  perfumes, 
better  stay  in  Newport. 

The  Forestry  Department  will  not  resent  your 
coming.  Their  men  will  welcome  you  and  help  you 
to  find  camping  ground. 

Meanwhile,  before  the  railroads  have  wakened  up 
to  the  possibilities  of  the  National  Forests  as  a  play- 
ground, how  is  the  lone  American  man,  woman,  child, 
or  group  of  all  three,  to  find  the  way  to  the  National 
Forests?  What  will  the  outfit  cost;  and  how  is  the 
camper  to  get  established? 

Take  a  map  of  the  Western  States.  Though  there 
are  bits  of  National  Forests  in  Nebraska  and  Kansas 
and  the  Ozarks,  for  camping  and  playground  pur- 
poses draw  a  line  up  parallel  with  the  Rockies  from 
New  Mexico  to  Canada.  Your  playground  is  from 
that  line  westward.  To  me,  there  is  a  peculiar  attrac- 


8  THE  NATIONAL  FORESTS 

tion  in  the  forests  of  Colorado.  Nearly  all  are  from 
8,000  to  11,000  feet  above  sky-line  —  high,  dry 
park-like  forests  of  Engelmann  spruce  clear  of  brush 
almost  as  your  parlor  floor.  You  will  have  no  diffi- 
culty in  recognizing  the  Forests  as  the  train  goes  pant- 
ing up  the  divide.  Windfall,  timber  slash,  stumps 
half  as  high  as  a  horse,  brushwood,  the  bare  poles  and 
blackened  logs  of  burnt  areas  lie  on  one  side  —  Public 
Domain.  Trees  with  two  notches  and  a  blaze  mark 
the  Forest  bounds;  trees  with  one  notch  and  one 
blaze,  the  trail;  and  across  that  trail,  you  are  out  of 
the  Public  Domain  in  the  National  Forests.  There 
is  not  the  slightest  chance  of  your  not  recognizing  the 
National  Forests.  Windfall,  there  is  almost  none. 
It  has  been  cleared  out  and  sold.  Of  timber  slash, 
there  is  not  a  stick.  Wastage  and  brush  have  been 
carefully  burned  up  during  snowfall.  Windfall,  dead 
tops  and  ripe  trees,  all  have  been  cut  or  stamped  with 
the  U.  S.  hatchet  for  logging  off.  These  Colorado 
Forests  are  more  like  a  beautiful  park  than  wild  land. 
Come  up  to  Utah ;  and  you  may  vary  your  camping 
in  the  National  Forests  there,  by  trips  to  the  wonder- 
ful canons  out  from  Ogden,  or  to  the  natural  bridges 
in  the  South.  In  the  National  Forests  of  California, 
you  have  pretty  nearly  the  best  that  America  can 
offer  you:  views  of  the  ocean  in  Santa  Barbara  and 
Monterey;  cloudless  skies  everywhere;  the  big  trees 
in  the  Sequoia  Forest ;  the  Yosemite  in  the  Stanislaus ; 
forests  in  the  northern  part  of  the  State  where  you 
could  dance  on  the  stump  of  a  redwood  or  build  a 
cabin  out  of  a  single  sapling;  and  everywhere  in  the 


THE  NATIONAL  FORESTS  9 

northern  mountains,  are  the  voices  of  the  waters  and 
the  white,  burnished,  shining  peaks.  I  met  a  woman 
who  found  her  playground  one  summer  by  driving  up 
in  a  tented  wagon  through  the  National  Forests  from 
Colorado  to  Montana.  Camp  stove  and  truck  bed 
were  in  the  democrat  wagon.  An  outfitter  supplied 
the  horses  for  a  rental  which  I  have  forgotten.  The 
borders  of  most  of  the  National  Forests  may  be 
reached  by  wagon.  The  higher  and  more  intimate 
trails  may  be  essayed  only  on  foot  or  on  horseback. 

How  much  will  the  trip  cost?  You  must  figure 
that  out  for  yourself.  There  is,  first  of  all,  your  rail- 
way fare  from  the  point  you  leave.  Then  there  is 
the  fare  out  to  the  Forest — usually  not  $10.  Go 
straight  to  the  supervisor  or  forester  of  the  district. 
He  will  recommend  the  best  hotel  of  the  little  moun- 
tain village  where  the  supervisor's  office  is  usually 
located.  At  those  hotels,  you  will  board  as  a  tran- 
sient at  $10  a  week;  as  a  permanent,  for  less.  In 
many  of  the  mountain  hamlets  are  outfitters  who  will 
rent  you  a  team  of  horses  and  tented  wagon ;  and  you 
can  cater  for  yourself.  In  fact,  as  to  clothing,  and 
outfit,  you  can  buy  cheaper  camp  kit  at  these  local 
stores  than  in  your  home  town.  Many  Eastern 
things  are  not  suitable  for  Western  use.  For 
instance,  it  is  foolish  to  go  into  the  thick,  rough  forests 
of  heavy  timber  with  an  expensive  eastern  riding  suit 
for  man  or  woman.  Better  buy  a  $4  or  $6  or  $8 
khaki  suit  that  you  can  throw  away  when  you  have 
torn  it  to  tatters.  An  Eastern  waterproof  coat  will 


io  THE  NATIONAL  FORESTS 

cost  you  from  $10  to  $30.  You  can  get  a  yellow 
cowboy  slicker  (I  have  two),  which  is  much  more 
serviceable  for  $2.50  or  $3.  As  to  boots,  I  prefer 
to  get  them  East,  as  I  like  an  elk-skin  leather  which 
never  shrinks  in  the  wet,  with  a  good  deal  of  cork  in 
the  soLe  to  save  jars,  also  a  broad  sole  to  save  your 
foot  in  the  stirrup;  but  avoid  a  conventional  riding 
boot.  Too  hot  and  too  stiff !  I  like  an  elk-skin  that 
will  let  the  water  out  fast  as  it  comes  in  if  you  ever 
have  to  wade,  and  which  will  not  shrink  in  the  drying. 
If  you  forswear  hotels  and  take  to  a  sky  tent,  or 
canvas  in  misty  weather,  better  carry  eatables  in  what 
the  guides  call  a  tin  "  grub  box,  "  in  other  words  a 
cheap  $2  tin  trunk.  It  keeps  out  ants  and  things ;  and 
you  can  lock  it  when  you  go  away  on  long  excursions. 
As  to  beds,  each  to  his  own  taste!  Some  like  the 
rolled  rubber  mattress.  Too  much  trouble  for  me. 
Besides,  I  am  never  comfortable  on  it.  If  you  camp 
near  the  snow  peaks,  a  chill  strikes  up  to  the  small  of 
your  back  in  the  small  of  the  morning.  I  don't  care 
to  feel  like  using  a  derrick  every  time  I  roll  over. 
The  most  comfortable  bed  I  know  is  a  piece  of 
twenty-five  cent  oilcloth  laid  over  the  slicker  on  hem- 
lock boughs,  fur  rug  over  that,  with  suit  case  for 
pillow,  and  a  plain  gray  blanket.  The  hardened 
mountaineer  will  laugh  at  the  next  recommendation; 
but  the  town  man  or  woman  going  out  for  play  or 
health  is  not  hardened,  and  to  attempt  sudden  harden- 
ing entails  the  endurance  of  a  lot  of  aches  that  are  apt 
to  spoil  the  holiday.  You  may  say  you  like  the  cold 
plunge  in  the  icy  water  coming  off  a  snowy  mountain. 


THE  NATIONAL  FORESTS  if 

I  confess  I  don't;  and  you'll  acknowledge,  even  if  you 
do  like  it,  you  are  in  such  a  hurry  to  come  out  of  it 
that  you  don't  linger  to  scrub.  I  like  my  hot  scrub ; 
and  you  can  have  that  only  by  taking  along  (no,  not 
a  rubber  bath)  a  $1.50  camp  stove  to  heat  the  water 
in  the  tent  while  you  are  eating  your  supper  out  round 
the  camp  fire  that  burns  with  such  a  delicious,  barky 
smell.  Besides,  late  in  the  season,  there  will  be  rains 
and  mist.  Your  camp  stove  will  dry  out  the  tent 
walls  and  keep  your  kit  free  of  rain  mold.  Do  you 
need  a  guide?  That  depends  entirely  on  yourself. 
If  you  camp  under  direction  and  within  range  of  the 
district  forester,  I  do  not  think  you  do. 

Whether  you  go  out  as  a  health  seeker,  or  a 
pleasure  seeker,  $8  to  $10  will  buy  you  a  miner's 
tent  —  a  miner's,  preferable  to  a  tepee  because  the 
walls  lift  the  canvas  roof  high  enough  not  to  bump 
your  head;  $2  will  buy  you  a  tin  trunk  or  grub  box; 
$1.50  will  cover  the  price  of  oilcloth  to  spread  over 
the  boughs  which  you  lay  all  over  the  floor  to  keep 
you  above  the  earth  damp;  $2  will  buy  you  a  little 
tin  camp  stove  to  keep  the  inside  of  your  tent  warm 
and  dry  for  the  hot  night  bath;  $10  will  cover  cost  of 
pail  and  cooking  utensils.  That  leaves  of  what 
would  be  your  monthly  expenses  at  even  a  moderate 
hotel,  $125  for  food  —  bacon,  flour,  fresh  fruit;  and 
your  food  should  not  exceed  $10  each  a  month.  If 
you  are  a  good  fisherman,  you  will  add  to  the  larder, 
by  whipping  the  mountain  streams  for  trout.  If  you 
need  an  attendant,  that  miner's  tent  is  big  enough  for 
two.  Or  if  you  will  stand  $5  or  $6  more  expense, 


12  THE  NATIONAL  FORESTS 

buy  a  tepee  tent  for  a  bath  and  toilet  room.  There 
will  be  windy  days  in  fall  and  spring  when  an  extra 
tent  with  a  camp  stove  in  it  will  prove  useful  for  the 
nightly  hot  bath. 

What  reward  do  you  reap  for  all  the  bother? 
You  are  away  from  all  dust  irritating  to  weak  lungs. 
You  are  away  from  all  possibility  of  re-infecting  your- 
self with  your  own  disease.  Except  in  late  autumn 
and  early  spring,  you  are  living  under  almost  cloudless 
skies,  in  an  atmosphere  steeped  in  sunshine,  spicy  with 
the  healing  resin  of  the  pines  and  hemlocks  and 
spruce,  that  not  only  scent  the  air  but  literally  perme- 
ate it  with  the  essences  of  their  own  life.  You  arc 
living  far  above  the  vapors  of  sea  level,  in  a  region 
luminous  of  light.  Instead  of  the  clang  of  street  car 
bells  and  the  jangle  of  nerves  tangled  from  too  many 
humans  in  town,  you  hear  the  flow  and  the  sing  and 
the  laughter  and  the  trebles  of  the  glacial  streams 
rejoicing  in  their  race  to  the  sea.  You  climb  the 
rough  hills;  and  your  town  lungs  blow  like  a  whale 
as  you  climb;  and  every  beat  pumps  inertia  out  and 
the  sun-healing  air  in.  If  an  invalid,  you  had  better 
take  a  doctor's  advice  as  to  how  high  you  should 
camp  and  climb.  In  town,  amid  the  draperies  and 
the  portieres  and  the  steam-heated  rooms,  an  invalid 
is  seeking  health  amid  the  habitat  of  mummies.  In 
the  Forests,  whether  you  will  or  not,  you  live  in  sun- 
shine that  is  the  very  elixir  of  life;  and  though  the 
frost  sting  at  night,  it  is  the  sting  of  pulsing,  super- 
abundant life,  not  the  lethargy  of  a  gradual  decay. 


THE  NATIONAL  FORESTS  13 

At  the  southern  edge  of  the  National  Forests  in 
the  Southwest  dwell  the  remnants  of  a  race,  can  be 
seen  the  remnants  of  cities,  stand  houses  near  enough 
the  train  to  be  touched  by  your  hand,  that  run  back  in 
unbroken  historic  continuity  to  dynasties  preceding 
the  Aztecs  of  Mexico  or  the  Copts  of  Egypt.  When 
the  pyramids  were  young,  long  before  the  flood  gates 
of  the  Ural  Mountains  had  broken  before  the  inun- 
dating Aryan  hordes  that  overran  the  forests  and 
mountains  of  Europe  to  the  edge  of  the  Netherland 
seas,  this  race  which  you  can  see  to-day  dwelling  in 
New  Mexico  and  Arizona  were  spinning  their  wool, 
working  their  silver  mines,  and  on  the  approach  of 
the  enemy,  withdrawing  to  those  eagle  nests  on  the 
mountain  tops  which  you  can  see,  where  only  a  rope 
ladder  led  up  to  the  city,  or  uncertain  crumbling  steps 
cut  in  the  face  of  the  sheer  red  sandstone. 

And  besides  the  prehistoric  in  the  Forests  — 
what  will  you  find?  The  plains  below  you  like 
a  scroll,  the  receding  cities,  a  patch  of  smoke. 
You  had  thought  that  sky  above  the  plains  a  cloudless 
one,  air  that  was  pure,  buoyant  champagne  without 
dregs.  Now  the  plains  are  vanishing  in  a  haze  of 
dust,  and  you  —  you  are  up  in  that  cloudless  air, 
where  the  light  hits  the  rocks  in  spangles  of  pure 
crystal,  and  the  tang  of  the  clearness  of  it  pricks  your 
sluggish  blood  to  a  new,  buoyant,  pulsing  life.  You 
feel  as  if  somehow  or  other  that  existence  back  there 
in  towns  and  under  roofs  had  been  a  life  with  cob- 
webs on  the  brain  and  weights  on  the  wings  of  the 
spirit.  I  wonder  if  it  wasn't?  I  wonder  if  the 


14  THE  NATIONAL  FORESTS 

ancients,  after  all,  didn't  accord  with  science  in  ascrib- 
ing to  the  sun,  to  the  god  of  Light,  the  source  of  all 
our  strength?  Things  are  accomplished  not  in  the 
thinking,  but  in  the  clearness  of  the  thinking;  and  here 
is  the  realm  of  pure  light. 

Presently,  the  train  carrying  you  up  to  the  Forests 
of  the  Southwest  gives  a  bump.  You  are  in  dark- 
ness—  diving  through  some  tunnel  or  other;  and 
when  you  come  out,  you  could  drop  a  stone  sheer 
down  to  the  plains  a  couple  of  miles.  That  is  not  so 
far  as  up  in  South  Dakota.  In  Sundance  Canon 
off  the  National  Forests  there,  you  can  drop  a  pebble 
down  seven  miles.  That's  not  as  the  crow  flies.  It 
is  as  the  train  climbs.  But  patience !  The  road  into 
Sundance  Canon  takes  you  to  the  top  of  the  world,  to 
be  sure;  but  that  is  only  7,000  feet  up;  and  this  little 
Moffat  Road  in  Colorado  takes  you  above  timber 
line,  above  cloud  line,  pretty  nearly  above  growth  line, 
12,000  feet  above  the  sea;  at  11,600  you  can  take 
your  lunch  inside  a  snow  shed  on  the  Moffat  Road. 

Long  ago,  men  proved  their  superiority  to  other 
men  by  butchering  each  other  in  hordes  and  droves 
and  shambles;  Alva  must  have  had  a  good  100,000 
corpses  to  his  credit  in  the  Netherlands.  Today,  men 
make  good  by  conquering  the  elements.  For  four 
hours,  this  little  Colorado  road  has  been  cork-screw- 
ing up  the  face  of  a  mountain  pretty  nearly  sheer  as  a 
wall;  and  for  every  twist  and  turn  and  tunnel,  some 
engineer  fellow  on  the  job  has  performed  mathe- 
matical acrobatics;  and  some  capitalist  behind  the 
engineer  —  the  man  behind  the  modern  gun  of  con- 


From  a  lookout  point  in  the  Coconino  Forest  of  Arizona 


THE  NATIONAL  FORESTS  15 

quest  —  has  paid  the  cost.  In  this  case,  it  was  David 
Moffat  paid  for  our  dance  in  the  clouds  —  a  mining 
man,  who  poked  his  brave  little  road  over  the  moun- 
tains across  the  desert  towards  the  Pacific. 

You  come  through  those  upper  tunnels  still  higher. 
Below,  no  longer  lie  the  plains,  but  seas  of  clouds; 
and  it  is  to  the  everlasting  credit  of  the  sense  and  taste 
of  Denver  people,  that  they  have  dotted  the  outer 
margin  of  this  rock  wall  with  slab  and  log  and  shingle 
cottages,  built  literally  on  the  very  backbone  of  the 
continent  overlooking  such  a  stretch  of  cloud  and 
mountain  and  plain  as  I  do  not  know  of  elsewhere 
in  the  whole  world.  In  Sundance  Canon,  South 
Dakota,  summer  people  have  built  in  the  bottom  of 
the  gorge.  Here,  they  are  dwellers  in  the  sky. 
Rugged  pines  cling  to  the  cliff  edge  blasted  and  bare 
and  wind  torn ;  but  dauntlessly  rooted  in  the  everlast- 
ing rocks.  Little  mining  hamlets  composed  of  match- 
box houses  cling  to  the  face  of  the  precipice  like  card- 
boards stuck  on  a  nail.  Then,  you  have  passed 
through  the  clouds,  and  are  above  timber  line;  and  a 
lake  lies  below  you  like  a  pool  of  pure  turquoise;  and 
you  twist  round  the  flank  of  the  great  mountain,  and 
there  is  a  pair  of  green  lakes  below  you  —  emerald 
jewels  pendant  from  the  neck  of  the  old  mountain 
god;  and  with  a  bump  and  a  rattle  of  the  wheels, 
clear  over  the  top  of  the  Continental  Divide  you 
go  —  believe  me,  a  greater  conquest  than  any  Napo- 
leon's march  to  Moscow,  or  Alva's  shambles  of  head- 
less victims  in  the  Netherlands. 

You  take  lunch  in  a  snow  shed  on  the  very  crest  of 


1 6  THE  NATIONAL  FORESTS 

the  Continental  Divide.  I  wish  you  could  taste  the 
air.  It  isn't  air.  It's  champagne.  It  isn't  cham- 
pagne, it's  the  very  elixir  of  life.  There  can  never 
be  any  shadows  here;  for  there  is  nothing  to  cast  the 
shadow.  Nightfall  must  wrap  the  world  here  in  a 
mantle  of  rest,  in  a  vespers  of  worship  and  quiet, 
in  a  crystal  of  dying  chrysoprase  above  the  green 
enameled  lake  and  the  forests  below,  looking  like 
moss,  and  the  pearl  clouds,  a  sea  of  fire  in  the  sunset, 
and  the  plain  —  there  are  no  more  plains  —  this  is 
the  top  of  the  world ! 

Yet  it  is  not  always  a  vesper  quiet  in  the  high 
places.  When  I  came  back  this  way  a  week  later, 
such  a  blizzard  was  raging  as  I  have  never  seen  in 
Manitoba  or  Alberta.  The  high  spear  grass  tossed 
before  it  like  the  waves  of  a  sea;  and  the  blasted 
pines  on  the  cliffs  below  —  you  knew  why  their  roots 
had  taken  such  grip  of  the  rocks  like  strong  natures 
in  disaster.  The  storm  might  break  them.  It  could 
not  bend  them,  nor  wrench  them  from  their  roots. 
The  telegraph  wires,  for  reasons  that  need  not  be  told 
are  laid  flat  on  the  ground  up  here. 

When  you  cross  the  Divide,  you  enter  the  National 
Forests.  National  Forests  above  tree  line?  To  be 
sure !  These  deep,  coarse  upper  grasses  provide 
ideal  pasturage  for  sheep  from  June  to  September; 
and  the  National  Forests  administer  the  grazing 
lands  for  the  general  use  of  all  the  public,  instead  of 
permitting  them  to  be  monopolized  by  the  big 
rancher,  who  promptly  drove  the  weaker  man  off  by 
cutting  the  throats  of  intruding  flocks  and  herds. 


THE  NATIONAL  FORESTS  17 

Then,  the  train  is  literally  racing  down  hill  —  with 
the  trucks  bumping  heels  like  the  wheels  of  a  wagon 
on  a  sluggish  team;  and  a  new  tang  conies  to  the 
ozone  —  the  tang  of  resin,  of  healing  balsam,  of  cin- 
namon smells,  of  incense  and  frankincense  and  myrrh, 
of  spiced  sunbeams  and  imprisoned  fragrance  —  the 
fragrance  of  thousands  upon  thousands  of  years  of 
dew  and  light,  of  pollen  dust  and  ripe  fruit  cones; 
the  attar,  not  of  Persian  roses,  but  of  the  everlasting 
pines. 

The  train  takes  a  swift  swirl  round  an  escarpment 
of  the  mountain;  and  you  are  in  the  Forests  proper, 
serried  rank  upon  rank  of  the  blue  spruce  and  the 
lodgepole  pine.  No  longer  spangles  of  light  hitting 
back  from  the  rocks  in  sparks  of  fire!  The  light 
here  is  sifted  pollen  dust  —  pollen  dust,  the  pri- 
mordial life  principle  of  the  tree  —  with  the  purple, 
cinnamon-scented  cones  hanging  from  the  green  arms 
of  the  conifers  like  the  chevrons  of  an  enranked 
army;  and  the  cones  tell  you  somewhat  of  the  service 
as  the  chevrons  do  of  the  soldier  man.  Some  coni- 
fers hold  their  cones  for  a  year  before  they  send  the 
seed,  whirling,  swirling,  broadside  to  the  wind,  aviat- 
ing pixy  parachutes,  airy  armaments  for  the  conquest 
of  arid  hills  to  new  forest  growth,  though  the  process 
may  take  the  trifling  aeon  of  a  thousand  years  or  so. 
At  one  season,  when  you  come  to  the  Forests,  the  air 
is  full  of  the  yellow  pollen  of  the  conifers,  gold  dust 
whose  alchemy,  could  we  but  know  it,  would  unlock 
the  secrets  of  life.  At  another  season  —  the  season 
when  I  happened  to  be  in  the  Colorado  Forests  —  the 


1 8  THE  NATIONAL  FORESTS 

very  atmosphere  is  alive  with  these  forest  airships, 
conifer  seeds  sailing  broadside  to  the  wind.  You 
know  why  they  sail  broadside,  don't  you?  If  they 
dropped  plumb  like  a  stone,  the  ground  would  be 
seeded  below  the  heavily  shaded  branches  inches  deep 
in  self-choking,  sunless  seeds;  but  when  the  broadside 
of  the  sail  to  the  pixy's  airship  tacks  to  the  veering 
wind,  the  seed  is  carried  out  and  away  and  far  beyond 
the  area  of  the  shaded  branches ;  to  be  caught  up  by 
other  counter  currents  of  wind  and  hurled,  perhaps, 
down  the  mountain  side,  destined  to  forest  the  naked 
side  of  a  cliff  a  thousand  years  hence.  It  is  a  fact, 
too,  worth  remembering  and  crediting  to  the  wiles 
and  ways  of  Dame  Nature  that  destruction  by  fire 
tends  but  to  free  these  conifer  seeds  from  the  cones; 
so  that  they  fall  on  the  bare  burn  and  grow  slowly  to 
maturity  under  the  protecting  nursery  of  the  tremu- 
lous poplars  and  pulsing  cottonwoods. 

The  train  has  not  gone  very  far  in  the  National 
Forests  before  you  see  the  sleek  little  Douglas  squirrel 
scurrying  from  branch  to  branch.  From  the  tremor 
of  his  tiny  body  and  the  angry  chitter  of  his  parted 
teeth,  you  know  he  is  swearing  at  you  to  the  utmost 
limit  of  his  squirrel  (?)  language;  but  that  is  not 
surprising.  This  little  rodent  of  the  evergreens  is 
the  connoisseur  of  all  conifers.  He,  and  he  alone, 
knows  the  best  cones  for  reproductive  seed.  No 
wonder  he  is  so  full  of  fire  when  you  consider  he 
diets  on  the  fruit  of  a  thousand  years  of  sunlight  and 
dew;  so  when  the  ranger  seeks  seed  to  reforest  the 


THE  NATIONAL  FORESTS  19 

burned  or  scant  slopes,  he  rifles  the  cache  of  this  little 
furred  forester,  who  suspects  your  noisy  trainload 
of  robbery  —  robbery  —  sc  —  scur  —  r  —  there ! 

Then,  the  train  bumps  and  jars  to  a  stop  with  a 
groaning  of  brakes  on  the  steep  down  grade,  for  a 
drink  at  the  red  water  tank;  and  you  drop  off  the 
high  car  steps  with  a  glance  forward  to  see  that  the 
baggage  man  is  dropping  off  your  kit.  The  brakes 
reverse.  With  a  scrunch,  the  train  is  off  again, 
racing  down  hill,  a  blur  of  steamy  vapor  like  a  cloud 
against  the  lower  hills.  Before  the  rear  car  has  dis- 
appeared round  the  curve,  you  have  been  accosted 
by  a  young  man  in  Norfolk  suit  of  sage  green  wearing 
a  medal  stamped  with  a  pine  tree  —  the  ranger, 
absurdly  young  when  you  consider  each  ranger 
patrols  and  polices  100,000  acres  compared  to  the 
1,700  which  French  and  German  wardens  patrol  and 
daily  deals  with  criminal  problems  ten  times  more 
difficult  than  those  confronting  the  Northwest 
Mounted  Police,  without  the  military  authority  which 
backs  that  body  of  men. 

You  have  mounted  your  pony  —  men  and  women 
alike  ride  astride  in  the  Western  States.  It  heads  of 
its  own  accord  up  the  bridle  trail  to  the  ranger's 
house,  in  this  case  9,000  feet  above  sea  level,  1,000 
feet  above  ordinary  cloud  line.  The  hammer  of  a 
woodpecker,  the  scur  of  a  rasping  blue  jay,  the 
twitter  of  some  red  bills,  the  soft  thug  of  the  unshod 
broncho  over  the  trail  of  forest  mold,  no  other  sound 
unless  the  soul  of  the  sea  from  the  wind  harping  in 
the  trees.  Better  than  the  jangle  of  city  cars  in  that 


20  THE  NATIONAL  FORESTS 

stuffy  hotel  room  of  the  germ-infested  town,  isn't 
it?  ' 

If  there  is  snow  on  the  peaks  above,  you  feel  it  in 
the  cool  sting  of  the  air.  You  hear  it  in  the  trebling 
laughter,  in  the  trills  and  rills  of  the  brook  babbling 
down,  sound  softened  by  the  moss  as  all  sounds  are 
hushed  and  low  keyed  in  this  woodland  world.  And 
all  the  time,  you  have  the  most  absurd  sense  of  being 
set  free  from  something.  By-and-by  when  eye  and 
ear  are  attuned,  you  will  see  the  light  reflected  from 
the  pine  needles  glistening  like  metal,  and  hear  the 
click  of  the  same  needles  like  fairy  castanets  of  joy. 
Meantime,  take  a  long,  deep,  full  breath  of  these 
condensed  sunbeams  spiced  with  the  incense  of  the 
primeval  woods;  for  you  are  entering  a  temple,  the 
temple  where  our  forefathers  made  offerings  to  the 
gods  of  old,  the  temple  which  our  modern  churches 
imitate  in  Gothic  spire  and  arch  and  architrave  and 
nave.  Drink  deep  in  open,  full  lungs;  for  you  are 
drinking  of  an  elixir  of  life  which  no  apothecary  can 
mix.  Most  of  us  are  a  bit  ill  mentally  and  physically 
from  breathing  the  dusty  street  sweepings  of  filth  and 
germs  which  permeate  the  hived  towns.  They  will 
not  stay  with  you  here !  Other  dust  is  in  this  air,  the 
gold  dust  of  sunlight  and  resin  and  ozone.  They 
will  make  you  over,  will  these  forest  gods,  if  you 
will  let  them,  if  you  will  lave  in  their  sunlight,  and 
breathe  their  healing,  and  laugh  with  the  chitter  and 
laughter  of  the  squirrels  and  streams. 

And  what  if  your  spirit  does  not  go  out  to  meet  the 
spirit  of  the  woods  halfway?  Then,  the  woods  will 


THE  NATIONAL  FORESTS  21 

close  round  you  with  a  chill  loneliness  unutterable. 
You  are  an  alien  and  an  exile.  They  will  have  none 
of  you  and  will  reveal  to  you  none  of  their  joyous, 
dauntless  life  secrets. 


CHAPTER  II 

AMONG  THE  NATIONAL  FORESTS  OF  THE  SOUTHWEST 

"^  TOU  have  not  ridden  far  towards  the  ranger's 
jf  house  in  the  Forest  before  you  become  aware 
JL  that  clothing  for  town  is  not  clothing  for  the 
wilds.  No  matter  how  hot  it  may  be  at  mid-day,  in 
this  high,  rare  air  a  chill  comes  soon  as  the  sun  begins 
to  sink.  To  be  comfortable,  light  flannels  must  be 
worn  next  the  skin,  with  an  extra  heavy  coat  avail- 
able —  never  farther  away  from  yourself  than  the 
pack  straps.  Night  may  overtake  you  on  a  hard 
trail.  Long  as  you  have  an  extra  heavy  coat  and  a 
box  of  matches,  night  does  not  matter.  You  are  safer 
benighted  in  the  wilds  than  in  New  York  or  Chicago. 
If  you  have  camp  fire  and  blanket,  night  in  the  wilds 
knows  nothing  of  the  satyr-faced  spirit  of  evil,  sand- 
bagger  and  yeggman,  that  stalks  the  town. 

To  anyone  used  to  travel  in  the  wilderness,  it  seems 
almost  like  little  boys  playing  Robinson  Crusoe  to 
give  explicit  directions  as  to  dress.  Yet  only  a  few 
years  ago,  the  world  was  shocked  and  horrified  by  the 
death  of  a  town  man  exploring  the  wilds;  and  that 
death  was  directly  traceable  to  a  simple  matter  of 
boots.  His  feet  played  out.  He  had  gone  into  a 
country  of  rocky  portages  with  only  one  pair  of  moc- 
casins. I  have  never  gone  into  the  wilds  for  longer 

22 


THE  FORESTS  OF  THE  SOUTHWEST     23 

than  four  months  at  a  time.  Yet  I  have  never  gone 
with  less  than  four  sets  of  footgear.  Primarily,  you 
need  a  pair  of  good  outing  boots ;  and  outing  boots  are 
good  only  when  they  combine  two  qualities  —  comfort 
and  thick  enough  soles  to  protect  your  feet  from  sharp 
rock  edges  if  you  climb,  broad  enough  soles,  too,  to 
protect  the  edge  of  your  feet  from  hard  knocks  from 
passing  trees  and  jars  in  the  stirrup.  For  the  rest, 
you  need  about  two  extras  in  case  you  chip  chunks  out 
of  these  in  climbing;  and  if  you  camp  near  glaciers  or 
snow  fields,  a  pair  of  moccasins  for  night  wear  will 
add  to  comfort.  You  may  get  them  if  you  like  to 
spend  the  money  —  $8  leggings  and  $8  horsehide 
shoes  and  cowboy  hat  and  belted  corduroy  suit  and 
all  the  other  paraphernalia  by  which  the  seasoned 
Westerner  recognizes  the  tenderfoot.  You  may  get 
them  if  you  want  to.  It  will  not  hurt  you;  but  a  $3 
cowboy  slicker  for  rainy  days  and  a  pair  of  boots 
guaranteed  to  let  the  water  out  as  fast  as  it  comes  in, 
these  and  the  ordinary  outing  garments  of  any  other 
part  of  the  world  are  the  prime  essentials. 

This  matter  of  proper  preparation  recalls  a  little 
English  woman  who  determined  to  train  her  boys  and 
girls  to  be  resourceful  and  independent  by  taking 
them  camping  each  summer  in  the  forests  of  the 
Pacific  Coast.  They  were  on  a  tramp  one  day  twelve 
miles  from  camp  when  a  heavy  fog  blew  in,  and  they 
lost  themselves.  That  is  not  surprising  when  you 
consider  the  big  tree  country.  Two  notches  and  one 
blaze  mark  the  bounds  of  the  National  Forests;  one 
notch  and  one  blaze,  the  trail ;  but  they  had  gone  off 


24     THE  FORESTS  OF  THE  SOUTHWEST 

the  trail  trout  fishing.  "  If  they  had  been  good  path- 
finders, they  could  have  found  the  way  out  by  fol- 
lowing the  stream  down,  "  remarked  a  critic  of  this 
little  group  to  me;  and  a  very  apt  criticism  it  was 
from  the  safe  vantage  point  of  a  study  chair.  How 
about  it,  if  when  you  came  to  follow  the  stream  down, 
it  chanced  to  cut  through  a  gorge  you  couldn't  follow, 
with  such  a  sheer  fall  of  rock  at  the  sides  and  such  a 
crisscross  of  big  trees,  house-high,,  that  you  were 
driven  back  from  the  stream  a  mile  or  two?  You 
would  keep  your  directions  by  sunlight?  Maybe; 
but  that  big  tree  region  is  almost  impervious  to  sun- 
light; and  when  the  fog  blows  in  or  the  clouds  blow 
down  thick  as  wool,  you  will  need  a  pocket  compass 
to  keep  the  faintest  sense  of  direction.  Compass 
signs  of  forest-lore  fail  here.  There  are  few  flowers 
under  the  dense  roofing  to  give  you  sense  of  east  or 
west;  and  you  look  in  vain  for  the  moss  sign  on  the 
north  bark  of  the  tree.  All  four  sides  are  heavily 
mossed ;  and  where  the  little  Englishwoman  lost  her- 
self, they  were  in  ferns  to  their  necks. 

"  Weren't  the  kiddies  afraid?  "  I  asked. 

"Not  a  bit!  Bob  got  the  trout  ready;  and  Son 
made  a  big  fire.  We  curled  ourselves  up  round  it  for 
the  night;  and  I  wish  you  could  have  seen  the  chil- 
dren's delight  when  the  clouds  began  to  roll  up  below 
in  the  morning.  It  was  like  a  sea.  The  youngsters 
had  never  seen  clouds  take  fire  from  the  sun  coming 
up  below.  I  want  to  tell  you,  too,  that  we  put  out 
every  spark  of  that  fire  before  we  left  in  the  morn- 
ing." 


THE  FORESTS  OF  THE  SOUTHWEST     25 

All  of  which  conveys  its  own  moral  for  the  camper 
in  the  National  Forests. 

It  ought  not  to  be  necessary  to  say  that  you  cannot 
go  to  the  National  Forests  expecting  to  billet  yourself 
at  the  ranger's  house.  Many  of  the  rangers  are 
married  and  have  a  houseful  of  their  own.  Those 
not  married,  have  no  facilities  whatever  for  taking 
care  of  you.  In  my  visit  to  the  Vasquez  Forest,  I 
happened  to  have  a  letter  of  introduction  to  the 
ranger  and  his  mother,  who  took  me  in  with  that 
bountiful  hospitality  characteristic  of  the  frontier;  but 
directly  across  the  road  from  the  ranger's  cabin  was 
a  little  log  slab-sided  hotel  where  any  comer  could 
have  stayed  in  perfect  comfort  for  $7  a  week;  and 
at  the  station,  where  the  train  stopped,  was  another 
very  excellent  little  hotel  where  you  could  have  stayed 
and  enjoyed  meals  that  for  nutritious  cooking  might 
put  a  New  York  dinner  to  shame  —  all  to  the  tune 
of  $10  a  week.  Also,  at  this  very  station,  is  the 
Supervisor's  office  of  the  Forestry  Department.  By 
inquiry  here,  the  newcomer  can  ascertain  all  facts  as 
to  tenting  oufit  and  camping  place.  Only  one  point 
must  be  kept  in  mind  —  do  not  go  into  the  National 
Forests  expecting  the  railroads,  or  the  rangers,  or 
Providence,  to  look  after  you.  Do  not  go  unless 
you  are  prepared  to  look  after  yourself. 

And  now  that  you  are  in  the  National  Forests, 
what  are  you  going  to  do?  You  can  ride;  or  you  can 
hunt;  or  you  can  fish;  or  you  can  bathe  in  the  hot 
springs  that  dot  so  many  of  these  intermountain 
regions,  where  God  has  landscaped  the  playground 


26     THE  FORESTS  OF  THE  SOUTHWEST 

for  a  nation;  or  you  can  go  in  for  records  mountain 
climbing;  or  you  can  go  sightseeing  in  the  most  mar- 
velously  beautiful  mountain  scenery  in  the  whole 
world;  or  you  can  prowl  round  the  prehistoric  cave 
and  cliff  dwellings  of  a  race  who  flourished  in  mighty 
power,  now  solitary  and  silent  cities,  contemporane- 
ous with  that  Egyptian  desert  runner  whose  skeleton 
lies  in  the  British  Museum  marked  20,000  B.  C.  It 
isn't  every  day  you  can  wander  through  the  deserted 
chambers  of  a  king's  palace  with  500  rooms.  Tour- 
ist agencies  organize  excursion  parties  for  lesser  and 
younger  palaces  in  Europe.  I  haven't  heard  of  any 
to  visit  the  silent  cities  of  the  cliff  and  cave  dwellers 
on  the  Jemez  Plateau  of  New  Mexico,  or  the  Gila 
River,  Arizona,  or  even  the  easily  accessible  dead 
cities  of  forgotten  peoples  in  the  National  Forest  of 
Southern  Colorado.  What  race  movement  in  the 
first  place  sent  these  races  perching  their  wonderful 
tier-on-tier  houses  literally  on  the  tip-top  of  the 
world  ? 

The  prehistoric  remains  of  the  Southwest  are  now, 
of  course,  under  the  jurisdiction  of  the  Forestry  De- 
partment; and  you  can't  go  digging  and  delving  and 
carrying  relics  from  the  midden  heaps  and  baked 
earthen  floors  without  the  permission  of  the  Secretary 
of  Agriculture;  but  if  you  go  in  the  spirit  of  an  in- 
vestigator, you  will  get  that  permission. 

The  question  isn't  what  is  there  to  do.  It  is 
which  of  the  countless  things  there  are  to  do  are  you 
going  to  choose  to  do  3  When  Mr.  Roosevelt  goes 


THE  FORESTS  OF  THE  SOUTHWEST     27 

to  the  National  Forests,  he  strikes  for  the  Holy  Cross 
Mountain  and  bags  a  grizzly.  When  ordinary  folk 
hie  to  this  Forest,  they  take  along  a  bathing  suit  and 
indulge  in  a  daily  plunge  in  the  hot  pools  at  Glenwood 
Springs.  If  the  light  is  good  and  the  season  yet 
early,  you  can  still  see  the  snow  in  the  crevices  of  the 
peak,  giving  the  Forest  its  name  of  the  Holy  Cross. 
People  say  there  is  no  historic  association  to  our 
West.  Once  a  foolish  phrase  is  uttered,  it  is  surpris- 
ing how  sensible  people  will  go  on  repeating  it. 
Take  this  matter  of  the  "  Holy  Cross  "  name.  If 
you  go  investigating  how  these  "  Holy  Cross  "  peaks 
got  their  names  from  old  Spanish  padres  riding  their 
burros  into  the  wilderness,  it  will  take  you  a  hard 
year's  reading  just  to  master  the  Spanish  legends 
alone.  Then,  if  you  dive  into  the  realm  of  the  cliff 
dwellers,  you  will  be  drowned  in  historic  antiquity 
before  you  know.  In  the  Glenwood  Springs  region, 
you  will  not  find  the  remnants  of  prehistoric  people ; 
but  you'll  find  the  hot  springs. 

Just  two  warnings:  one  as  to  hunting;  the  other,  as 
to  mountain  climbing.  There  is  still  big  game  in 
Colorado  Forests  —  bear,  mountain  sheep,  elk,  deer; 
and  the  ranger  is  supposed  to  be  a  game  warden;  but 
a  man  patrolling  100,000  acres  can't  be  all  over  at 
one  time.  As  to  mountain  climbing,  you  can  get  your 
fill  of  it  in  Grand  Canon,  above  Ouray,  at  Pike's 
Peak  —  a  dozen  places,  and  only  the  mountain 
climber  and  his  troglodyte  cliff-climbing  prototype 
know  the  drunken,  frenzied  joy  of  climbing  on  the 
roof  of  the  earth  and  risking  life  and  limb  to  stand 


28     THE  FORESTS  OF  THE  SOUTHWEST 

with  the  kingdoms  of  the  world  at  your  feet.  But 
unless  you  are  a  trained  climber,  take  a  guide  with 
you,  or  the  advice  of  some  local  man  who  knows  the 
tricks  and  the  moods  and  the  wiles  and  the  ways  of 
the  upper  mountain  world.  Looking  from  the  valley 
up  to  the  peak,  a  patch  of  snow  may  seem  no  bigger 
to  you  than  a  good-sized  table-cloth.  Look  out!  If 
it  is  steep  beneath  that  "  table-cloth  "  and  the  forest 
shows  a  slope  clean-swept  of  trees  as  by  a  mighty 
broom,  be  careful  how  you  cross  and  recross  following 
the  zigzag  trail  that  corkscrews  up  below  the  far 
patch  of  white!  I  was  crossing  the  Continental 
Divide  one  summer  in  the  West  when  a  woman  on 
the  train  pointed  to  a  patch  of  white  about  ten  miles 
up  the  mountain  slope  and  asked  if  "  that "  were 
"  rock  or  snow."  I  told  her  it  was  a  very  large  snow 
field,  indeed;  that  we  saw  only  the  forefoot  of  it  hang- 
ing over  the  edge;  that  the  upper  part  was  supposed 
to  be  some  twenty  miles  across.  She  gave  me  a  look 
meant  for  Mrs.  Ananias.  A  month  later,  when  I 
came  back  that  way,  the  train  suddenly  slowed  up. 
The  slide  had  come  down  and  lay  in  white  heaps 
across  the  track  three  or  four  miles  down  into  the 
valley  and  up  the  other  side.  The  tracks  were  safe 
enough;  for  the  snow  shed  threw  the  slide  over  the 
track  on  down  the  slope;  but  it  had  caught  a  cluster 
of  lumbermen's  shacks  and  buried  eight  people  in  a 
sudden  and  eternal  sleep.  '  We  saw  it  coming,"  said 
one  of  the  survivors,  "  and  we  thought  we  had  plenty 
of  time.  It  must  have  been  ten  miles  away.  One 
of  the  men  went  in  to  get  his  wife.  Before  he  could 


THE  FORESTS  OF  THE  SOUTHWEST     29 

come  out,  it  was  on  us.  Man  and  wife  and  child  were 
carried  down  in  the  house  just  as  it  stood  without 
crushing  a  timber.  It  must  have  been  the  concussion 
of  the  air  —  they  weren't  even  bruised  when  we  dug 
them  out;  but  the  kid  couldn't  even  have  wakened  up 
where  it  lay  in  the  bed;  and  the  man  hadn't  reached 
the  inside  room;  but  they  were  dead,  all  three." 

And  near  Ouray  another  summer,  a  chance  acquaint- 
ance pointed  to  a  peak.  "  That  one  caught  my  son 
last  June,"  he  said.  "  He  was  the  company's  doc- 
tor. He  had  been  born  and  raised  in  these  moun- 
tains; but  it  caught  him.  We  knew  the  June  heat 
had  loosened  those  upper  fields;  and  his  wife  didn't 
want  him  to  go;  but  there  was  a  man  sick  back  up 
the  mountain;  and  he  set  out.  They  saw  it  coming; 
but  it  wasn't  any  use.  It  came  —  quick — "  with  a 
snap  of  his  fingers  — "  as  that;  and  he  was  gone." 

It's  a  saying  among  all  good  mountaineers  that  it's 
"  only  the  fool  who  monkeys  with  a  mountain,"  es- 
pecially the  mountain  with  a  white  patch  above  a 
clean-swept  slope. 

And  there  is  another  thing  for  the  holiday  player  in 
the  National  Forests  to  do ;  and  it  is  the  thing  that  I 
like  best  to  do.  You  have  been  told  so  often  that 
you  have  come  to  believe  it  —  that  our  mountains  in 
America  lack  the  human  interests ;  lack  the  picturesque 
character  and  race  types  dotting  the  Alps,  for  instance. 
Don't  you  believe  it!  Go  West!  There  isn't  a 
mountain  or  a  forest  from  New  Mexico  to  Idaho  that 
has  not  its  mountaineering  votary,  its  quaint  hermit, 
or  its  sky-top  guide,  its  refugee  from  civilization,  or 


30     THE  FORESTS  OF  THE  SOUTHWEST 

simply  its  lover  of  God's  Great  Outdoors  and  Peace 
and  Big  Silence,  living  near  to  the  God  of  the  Great 
Open  as  log  cabin  on  a  hilltop  capped  by  the  stars  can 
bring  him.  Wild  creatures  of  woodland  ways  don't 
come  to  your  beck  and  call.  You  have  to  hunt  out 
their  secret  haunts.  The  same  with  these  Western 
mountaineers.  Hunt  them  out;  but  do  it  with  rever- 
ence !  I  was  driving  in  the  Gunnison  country  with  a 
local  magnate  two  years  ago.  We  saw  against  the 
far  skyline  a  cleft  like  the  arched  entrance  to  a  cave; 
only  this  arch  led  through  the  rock  to  the  sky  beyond. 

"  I  wish,"  said  my  guide,  "  you  had  time  to  spend 
two  or  three  weeks  here.  We'd  take  you  to  the  high 
country  above  these  battlements  and  palisades.  See 
that  hole  in  the  mountain?" 

"  Rough  Upper  Alpine  meadows?  "  I  asked. 

"  Oh,  dear  no !  Open  park  country  with  lakes  and 
the  best  of  fishing.  It  used  to  be  an  almost  impossi- 
ble trail  to  get  up  there;  but  there  has  been  a  hermit 
fellow  there  for  the  last  ten  years,  living  in  his  cabin 
and  hunting;  and  year  after  year,  never  paid  by  any- 
body, he  has  been  building  that  trail  up.  When  men 
ask  him  why  he  does  it,  he  says  it's  to  lead  people  up; 
for  the  glory  of  God  and  that  sort  of  thing.  Of 
course,  the  people  in  the  valley  think  him  crazy." 

Of  course,  they  do.  What  would  we,  who  love  the 
valley  and  its  dust  and  its  maniacal  jabber  of  jealousies 
and  dollars  do,  building  trails  to  lead  people  up  to 
see  the  Glory  of  God?  We  call  those  hill-crest  dwell- 
ers the  troglodytes.  Is  it  not  we,  who  are  the  earth 
dwellers,  the  dust  eaters,  the  insects  of  the  city  ant 


THE  FORESTS  OF  THE  SOUTHWEST     31 

heaps,  the  true  troglodytes  and  subsoilers  of  the  sordid 
iniquities  ?  Perhaps,  by  this,  you  think  there  are  some 
things  to  do  if  you  go  out  to  the  National  Forests. 

You  have  been  told  so  often  that  the  National  For- 
ests lock  up  timber  from  use  that  it  comes  as  a 
surprise  as  you  ride  up  the  woodland  trail  to  hear  the 
song  of  the  crosscut  saw  and  the  buzzing  hum  of  a 
mill  — •  perhaps  a  dozen  mills  —  running  full  blast 
here  in  this  National  Forest.  Heaps  of  sawdust  emit 
the  odors  of  imprisoned  flowers.  Piles  of  logs  lie  on 
all  sides  stamped  at  the  end  U.  S. —  timber  sold  on  the 
stump  to  any  lumberman  and  scaled  as  inspected  by 
the  ranger  and  paid  by  the  buyer.  To  be  sure,  the 
lumberman  cannot  have  the  lumber  for  nothing;  and 
it  was  for  nothing  that  the  Forests  were  seized  and 
cut  under  the  old  regime. 

How  was  the  spoliation  effected?  Two  or  three 
ways.  The  law  of  the  public  domain  used  to  permit 
burn  and  windfall  to  be  taken  out  free.  Your  lum- 
berman, then,  homesteaded  160  acres  on  a  slope  of 
forest  affording  good  timber  skids  and  chutes.  So 
far,  no  wrong!  Was  not  public  domain  open  to 
homesteading?  Good;  but  your  homesteading  lum- 
berman now  watched  his  chance  for  a  high  wind  away 
from  his  claim.  Then,  purely  accidentally,  you  under- 
stand, the  fire  sprang  up  and  swept  the  entire  slope 
of  green  forest  away  from  his  claim.  Your  home- 
steading lumberman  then  set  up  a  sawmill.  A  fire 
fanned  up  a  green  slope  by  a  high  wind  did  less  harm 
than  fire  in  a  slow  wind  in  dry  weather.  The  slope 


82     THE  FORESTS  OF  THE  SOUTHWEST 

would  be  left  a  sweep  of  desolate  burn  and  windfall, 
dead  trees  and  spars.  Your  lumberman  then  went  in 
and  took  his  windfall  and  his  burn  free.  Thousands, 
hundreds  of  thousands,  millions  of  acres  of  the  public 
domain,  were  rifled  free  from  the  public  in  this  way. 
If  challenged,  I  could  give  the  names  of  men  who  be- 
came millionaires  by  lumbering  in  this  manner. 

That  was  the  principle  of  Congress  when  it  with- 
drew from  public  domain  these  vast  wooded  areas  and 
created  the  National  Forests  to  include  grazing  and 
woodland  not  properly  administered  under  public  do- 
main. The  making  of  windfall  to  take  it  free  was 
stopped.  The  ranger's  job  is  to  prevent  fires.  Also 
he  permits  the  cutting  of  only  ripe,  full-grown  trees, 
or  dead  tops,  or  growth  stunted  by  crowding ;  and  all 
timber  sold  off  the  forests  must  be  marked  for  cut- 
ting and  stamped  by  the  ranger. 

But  the  old  spirit  assumes  protean  forms.  The 
latest  way  of  working  the  old  trick  is  through  the 
homestead  law.  You  have  been  told  that  homestead- 
ers cannot  go  in  on  the  National  Forests.  Yet  there, 
as  you  ride  along  the  trail,  is  a  cleared  space  of  160 
acres  where  a  Swedish  woman  and  her  boys  are  mak- 
ing hay;  and  inquiry  elicits  the  fact  that  millions  of 
acres  are  yearly  homesteaded  in  the  National  Forests. 
Just  as  fast  as  they  can  be  surveyed,  all  farming  lands 
in  the  National  Forests  are  opened  to  the  home- 
steader. Where,  then,  is  the  trick?  Your  farmer 
man  comes  in  for  a  homestead  and  he  picks  out  160 
acres  where  the  growth  of  big  trees  is  so  dense  they 
will  yield  from  $10,000  to  $40,000  in  timber  per 


THE  FORESTS  OF  THE  SOUTHWEST    33 

quarter  section.  Good!  Hasn't  the  homesteader  a 
right  to  this  profit?  He  certainly  has,  if  he  gets  the 
profit;  but  supposing  he  doesn't  clear  more  than  a 
few  hundred  feet  round  his  cabin,  and  hasn't  a  cent  of 
money  to  pay  the  heavy  expense  of  clearing  the  rest, 
and  sells  out  at  the  end  of  his  homesteading  for  a  few 
hundred  dollars?  Supposing  such  farmer  men  are 
brought  in  by  excursion  loads  by  a  certain  big  lumber 
company,  and  all  sell  out  at  a  few  hundred  dollars, 
claims  worth  millions,  to  that  certain  big  lumber  com- 
pany—  is  this  true  homesteading  of  free  land;  or  a 
grabbing  of  timber  for  a  lumber  trust? 

The  same  spirit  explains  the  furious  outcry  that 
miners  are  driven  off  the  National  Forest  land. 
Wherever  there  is  genuine  metal,  prospectors  can  go 
in  and  stake  their  claims  and  take  lumber  for  their 
preliminary  operations;  but  they  cannot  stake  thou- 
sands of  fictitious  claims,  then  yearly  turn  over  a 
quarter  of  a  million  dollars'  worth  of  timber  free  to 
a  big  smelting  trust  —  a  merry  game  worked  in  one 
of  the  Western  States  for  several  years  till  the  rang- 
ers put  a  stop  to  it. 

To  build  roads  through  an  empire  the  size  of  Ger- 
many would  require  larger  revenues  than  the  Forests 
yet  afford;  so  the  experiment  is  being  tried  of  permit- 
ting lumbermen  to  take  the  timber  free  from  the 
space  occupied  by  a  road  for  the  building  of  the  road. 
When  you  consider  that  you  can  drive  a  span  of  horses 
through  the  width  of  a  big  conifer,  or  build  a  cottage 
of  six  rooms  from  a  single  tree,  the  reward  for  road 
building  is  not  so  paltry  as  it  sounds. 


34    THE  FORESTS  OF  THE  SOUTHWEST 

Presently,  your  pony  turns  up  a  by-path.  You  are 
at  the  ranger's  cabin, —  picturesque  to  a  degree,  built 
of  hewn  logs  or  timbers,  with  slab  sides  scraped  down 
to  the  cinnamon  brown,  nailed  on  the  hewn  wood. 
Many  an  Eastern  country  house  built  in  elaborate  and 
shoddy  imitation  of  town  mansion,  or  prairie  home 
resembling  nothing  in  the  world  so  much  as  an  ugly 
packing  box,  might  imitate  the  architecture  of  the 
ranger's  cabin  to  the  infinite  improvement  of  appear- 
ances, not  to  mention  appropriateness. 

Appropriateness !  That  is  the  word.  It  is  a  for- 
est world;  and  the  ranger  tunes  the  style  of  his  house 
to  the  trees  around  him ;  log  walls,  log  partitions,  log 
veranda,  unbarked  log  fences,  rustic  seats,  fur  rugs, 
natural  stone  for  entrance  steps.  In  several  cases, 
where  the  cabin  had  been  built  of  square  hewn  timber 
with  tar  paper  lining,  slabs  scraped  of  the  loose  bark 
had  been  nailed  diagonally  on  the  outside;  and  a  more 
suitable  finish  to  a  wood  hermitage  could  hardly  be 
devised  —  surely  better  than  the  weathered  browns 
and  dirty  drabs  and  peeling  whites  that  you  see 
defacing  the  average  frontier  home.  Naturally 
enough,  city  people  building  cottages  as  play  places 
have  been  the  first  to  imitate  this  woodsy  architecture. 
You  see  the  slab-sided,  cinnamon-barked  cottages 
among  the  city  folk  who  come  West  to  play,  and  in 
the  lodges  of  hunting  clubs  far  East  as  the  Great 
Lakes.  Personally  I  should  like  to  see  the  contagion 
spread  to  the  farthest  East  of  city  people  who  are 
fleeing  the  cares  of  town,  "  back  to  the  land;"  but 
when  there  are  taken  to  the  country  all  the  cares  of 


THE  FORESTS  OF  THE  SOUTHWEST     35 

the  city  house,  a  regiment  of  servants  or  hostiles,  and 
a  mansion  of  grandeur  demanding  such  care,  it  seems 
to  me  the  city  man  is  carrying  the  woes  that  he  flees 
"  back  to  the  farm." 

What  sort  of  men  are  these  young  fellows  living 
halfway  between  heaven  and  earth  on  the  lonely  for- 
ested ridges  whose  nearest  neighbors  are  the  snow 
peaks?  Each,  as  stated  previously,  patrols  100,000 
acres.  That  is,  over  an  area  of  100,000  acres  he  is 
a  road  warden,  game  warden,  timber  cruiser,  sales 
agent,  United  States  marshal,  forester,  gardener,  nat- 
uralist, trail  builder,  fire  fighter,  cattle  boss,  sheep 
protector,  arrester  of  thugs,  thieves  and  poachers,  sur- 
veyor, mine  inspector,  field  man  on  homestead  jobs 
inside  the  limits,  tree  doctor,  nurseryman.  When 
you  consider  that  each  man's  patrol  stretched  out  in  a 
straight  line  would  reach  from  New  York  past  Al- 
bany, or  from  St.  Paul  to  Duluth,  without  any  of  the 
inaccuracy  with  which  a  specialist  loves  to  charge  the 
layman,  you  may  say  the  ranger  is  a  pretty  busy  man. 

What  sort  of  man  is  he?  Very  much  the  same 
type  as  the  Canadian  Northwest  Mounted  Policeman, 
with  these  differences :  He  is  very  much  younger.  I 
think  there  is  a  regulation  somewhere  in  the  Depart- 
ment that  a  new  man  older  than  forty-five  will  not  be 
taken.  This  insures  enthusiasm,  weeding  out  the  mis- 
fits, the  formation  of  a  body  of  men  trained  to  the 
work;  but  I  am  not  sure  that  it  is  not  a  mistake. 
There  is  a  saying  among  the  men  of  the  North  that 
"  it  takes  a  wise  old  dog  to  catch  a  wary  old  wolf;  " 
and  "  there  are  more  things  in  the  woods  than  ever 


36     THE  FORESTS  OF  THE  SOUTHWEST 

taught  in  1'pe'tee  cat  —  ee  —  cheesm."  I  am  not  sure 
that  the  weathered  old  dogs,  whose  catechism  has  been 
the  woods  and  the  world,  with  lots  of  hard  knocks, 
are  not  better  fitted  to  cope  with  some  of  the  difficul- 
ties of  the  ranger's  life  than  a  double-barreled  post- 
graduate from  Yale  or  Biltmore.  So  much  depends 
on  fist,  and  the  brain  behind  the  fist.  I  am  quite  sure 
that  many  of  the  blackguard  tricks  assailing  the  For- 
est Service  would  slink  back  to  unlighted  lairs  if  the 
tricksters  had  to  deal  not  with  the  boys  of  Eastern 
colleges,  gentlemen  always,  but  with  some  wise  and 
weathered  old  dog  of  frontier  life  who  wouldn't  con- 
sult Departmental  regulations  before  showing  his 
fangs.  He  would  consult  them,  you  know;  but  it 
would  be  afterwards.  Just  now,  while  the  rangers 
are  consulting  the  red  tape,  the  trickster  gets  away 
with  the  goods. 

In  the  next  place,  your  Forest  ranger  is  not  clothed 
with  the  authority  to  back  up  his  fight  which  the  N.W. 
M.P.  man  possesses.  In  theory,  your  ranger  is  a 
United  States  marshal,  just  as  your  Mounted  Police- 
man is  a  constable  and  justice  of  the  peace;  but  when 
it  comes  to  practice,  where  the  N.W.M.P.  has  a  free 
hand  on  the  instant,  on  the  spot,  to  arrest,  try,  con- 
vict and  imprison,  the  Forest  ranger  is  ham-strung 
and  hampered  by  official  red  tape.  For  instance,  rid- 
ing out  with  a  ranger  one  day,  we  came  on  an  irate 
mill  man  who  opened  out  a  fusillade  in  all  the  pro- 
fanity his  tongue  could  borrow.  The  ranger  turned 
toward  me  aghast. 

"Don't  mind  me!     Let  him  swear  himself  out! 


THE  FORESTS  OF  THE  SOUTHWEST     37 

I  want  to  see  for  myself  exactly  what  you  men  have 
to  deal  with !  " 

Now,  if  that  mill  man  had  used  such  language  to  a 
Mounted  Policeman,  he  would  have  been  arrested, 
sentenced  to  thirty  days  and  a  fine,  all  inside  of  twen- 
ty-four hours.  What  was  it  all  about?  An  attempt 
to  bulldoze  a  young  government  man  into  believing 
that  the  taking  of  logs  without  payment  was  permis- 
sible. 

4  What  will  you  do  to  straighten  it  all  out?  "  I 
asked. 

"  Lay  a  statement  of  the  facts  before  the  District 
Supervisor.  The  Supervisor  will  forward  all  to  Den- 
ver. Denver  will  communicate  with  Washington. 
Then,  soon  as  the  thing  has  been  investigated,  word 
will  come  back  from  Washington." 

Investigated?  If  you  know  anything  about  gov- 
ernment investigations,  you  will  not  stop  the  clock, 
as  Joshua  played  tricks  with  the  sun  dial,  to  prevent 
speed. 

"  Then,  it's  a  matter  of  six  weeks  before  you  can 
put  decency  and  respect  for  law  in  that  gentleman's 
heart?"  Tasked. 

"  Perhaps  longer,"  said  the  college  man  without  a 
suspicion  of  irony,  "  and  he  has  given  us  trouble  this 
way  ever  since  he  has  come  to  the  Forests." 

"  And  will  continue  to  give  you  trouble  till  the  law 
gives  you  a  free  hand  to  put  such  blackguards  to  bed 
till  they  learn  to  be  good." 

"  Yes,  that's  right.  This  isn't  the  first  time  men 
have  tried  to  get  away  with  logs  that  didn't  belong 


38     THE  FORESTS  OF  THE  SOUTHWEST 

to  them.  Once,  when  I  came  back  to  the  first  Forest 
where  I  served,  there  was  a  whole  pile  of  logs 
stamped  U.  S.  that  we  had  never  scaled.  By  the 
time  we  could  get  word  back  from  Washington,  the 
guilty  party  had  left  the  State  and  blame  had  been 
shunted  round  on  a  poor  half-witted  fellow  who 
didn't  know  what  he  was  doing;  but  we  forced  pay 
for  those  logs." 

It  is  a  common  saying  in  the  Northwest  that  it  takes 
eight  years  to  make  a  good  Mounted  Policeman  — 
eight  years  to  jounce  the  duffer  out  and  the  man  in; 
but  in  the  Forest  Service,  men  over  forty-five  are  not 
taken.  For  men  who  serve  up  to  forty-five,  the  in- 
ducements of  salary  beginning  at  $65  a  month  and 
seldom  exceeding  $200  are  not  sufficient  to  retain 
tested  veterans.  The  big  lumber  companies  will  pay 
a  trained  forester  more  for  the  same  work  on  pri- 
vately owned  timber  limits;  so  the  rangers  remain 
for  the  most  part  young.  Would  the  same  difficul- 
ties rise  if  wise  old  dogs  were  on  guard?  I  hardly 
think  so. 

What  manner  of  man  is  the  ranger?  As  we  sat 
round  the  little  parlor  of  the  cabin  that  night  in  the 
Vasquez  Forest,  an  army  man  turned  forester  struck 
up  on  a  piano  that  had  been  packed  on  horseback 
above  cloud-line  strains  of  Wagner  and  Beethoven. 
A  graduate  of  Ann  Arbor  and  post-graduate  of  Yale 
played  with  a  cigarette  as  he  gazed  at  his  own  fancies 
through  the  mica  glow  of  the  coal  stove.  A  Denver 
boy,  whose  mother  kept  house  in  the  cabin,  was  chief 


THE  FORESTS  OF  THE  SOUTHWEST     39 

ranger.  In  the  group  was  his  sister,  a  teacher  in  the 
village  school;  and  I  fancy  most  of  the  ranger  homes 
present  pretty  much  the  same  types,  though  one  does 
not  ordinarily  expect  to  hear  strains  of  grand  opera 
above  cloud-line.  Picture  the  men  dressed  in  sage- 
green  Norfolk  suits;  and  you  have  as  rare  a  scene  as 
Scott  ever  painted  of  the  men  in  Lincoln  green  in 
England's  borderland  forests. 

Of  course,  there  are  traitors  and  spies  and  Judas 
Iscariots  in  the  Service  with  lip  loyalty  to  public  weal 
and  one  hand  out  behind  for  thirty  pieces  of  silver  to 
betray  self-government;  but  under  the  present  regime, 
such  men  are  not  kept  when  found  out,  nor  shielded 
when  caught.  For  twenty  years,  the  world  has 
been  ringing  with  praise  of  the  Northwest  Mounted 
Police;  but  the  red-coat  men  have  served  their  day; 
and  the  extension  of  Provincial  Government  will  prac- 
tically disband  the  force  in  a  few  years.  Right  now, 
in  the  American  West,  is  a  similar  picturesque  body 
of  frontier  fighters  and  wardens,  doing  battle  against 
ten  times  greater  odds,  with  little  or  no  authority  to 
back  them  up,  and  under  constant  fire  of  slanderous 
mendacity  set  going  by  the  thieves  and  grafters  whose 
game  of  spoliation  has  been  stopped.  Let  spread- 
eagleism  look  at  the  figures  and  ponder  them,  and 
never  forget  them,  especially  never  forget  them, 
when  charges  are  being  hurled  against  the  Forest 
rangers!  In  the  single  fire  of  1909  more  rangers 
lost  their  lives  than  Mounted  Policemen  have  died  in 
the  Service  since  1870,  when  the  force  was  organ- 
ized. 


40     THE  FORESTS  OF  THE  SOUTHWEST 

Was  it  Nietzsche,  or  Haeckel,  or  Maeterlinck,  or 
all  of  them  together,  who  declared  that  Nature's 
constant  aim  is  to  perpetuate  and  surpass  herself? 
The  sponge  slipping  from  vegetable  to  animal  king- 
dom ;  the  animal  grading  up  to  man ;  man  stretching 
his  neck  to  become  —  what?  —  is  it  spirit,  the  being 
of  a  future  world?  The  tadpole  striving  for  legs  and 
wings,  till  in  the  course  of  the  centuries  it  developed 
both.  The  flower  flaunting  its  beauty  to  attract  bee 
and  butterfly  that  it  may  perfect  its  union  with  alien 
pollen  dust  and  so  perpetuate  a  species  that  shall  sur- 
pass itself.  The  tree  trying  to  encompass  and  over- 
come the  law  of  its  own  being  —  fixity  —  by  sending 
its  seeds  sailing,  whirling,  aviating  the  seas  of  the 
air,  with  wind  for  pilot  to  far  distant  clime. 

You  see  it  all  of  a  sun-washed  morning  in  a  ride  or 
walk  through  the  National  Forests.  You  thought 
the  tree  was  an  inanimate  thing,  didn't  you?  Yet  you 
find  John  Muir  and  Dante  clasping  hands  across  the 
centuries  in  agreement  that  the  tree  is  a  living,  sensate 
thing,  sensate  almost  as  you  are ;  with  its  seven  ages 
like  the  seven  ages  of  man;  with  the  same  ceaseless 
struggle  to  survive,  to  be  fit  to  survive,  to  battle  up  to 
light  and  stand  in  serried  rank  proud  among  its  peers, 
drawing  life  and  strength  straight  from  the  sun. 

The  storm  wind  ramps  through  its  thrashing 
branches ;  and  what  do  you  suppose  it  is  doing?  Pre- 
cisely what  the  storm  winds  of  adversity  do  to  you 
and  me :  blowing  down  the  dead  leaves,  snapping  off 
the  dead  branches,  making  us  take  tighter  hold  on  the 
verities  of  the  eternal  rocks,  teaching  us  to  anchor  on 


THE  FORESTS  OF  THE  SOUTHWEST    41 

facts,  not  fictions,  destroying  our  weakness,  strength- 
ening our  flabbiness,  making  us  prove  our  right  to  be 
fit  to  survive.  Woe  betide  the  tree  with  rotten  heart 
wood  or  mushy  anchorage !  You  see  its  fate  with 
upturned  roots  still  sticky  with  the  useless  muck.  Not 
so  different  from  us  humans  with  mushy  creeds  that 
can't  stand  fast  against  the  shocks  of  life ! 

You  say  all  this  is  so  much  symbolism;  but  when 
the  First  Great  Cause  made  the  tree  as  well  as  the 
man,  is  it  surprising  that  the  same  laws  of  life  should 
govern  both?  It  is  the  forester,  not  the  symbolist, 
who  divides  the  life  of  the  tree  into  seven  ages;  just 
as  it  is  the  poet,  not  the  philosopher,  who  divides  the 
life  of  man  in  seven  ages;  and  it  needs  no  Maeter- 
linck, or  Haeckel,  to  trace  the  similarity  between  the 
seven  ages.  Seedling,  sapling,  large  sapling,  pole, 
large  pole,  standard  and  set  —  marking  the  ages  of 
die  trees  —  all  have  their  prototypes  in  the  human. 
The  seedling  can  grow  only  under  the  protecting  nurs- 
ery of  earth,  air,  moisture  and  in  some  cases  the  shade 
of  other  trees.  The  young  conifers,  for  instance, 
grow  best  under  the  protecting  nursery  of  poplars 
and  cottonwoods,  as  one  sees  where  the  fire  has  run, 
and  the  quick  growers  are  already  shading  the  shy 
evergreens.  And  there  is  the  same  infant  mortality 
among  the  young  trees  as  in  human  life.  Too  much 
shade,  fire,  drought,  passing  hoof,  disease,  blight, 
weeds  out  the  weaklings  up  to  adolescence.  Then, 
the  real  business  of  living  begins  —  it  is  a  struggle, 
a  race,  a  constant  contention  for  the  top,  for  the  sun- 
light and  air  and  peace  at  the  top;  and  many  a  grand 


42     THE  FORESTS  OF  THE  SOUTHWEST 

old  tree  reaches  the  top  only  when  ripe  for  death. 
Others  live  on  their  three  score  years  and  ten,  their 
centuries,  and  in  the  case  of  the  sugar  pines  and  se- 
quoias, their  decades  of  centuries.     First  comes  the 
self-pruning,  the  branches  shaded  by  their  neighbors 
dying  and  dropping  off.     And  what  a  threshing  of 
arms,   of  strength  against  strength,  there  is  in  the 
storm  wind,  every  wrench  tightening  grip  to  the  rocks, 
some  trees  even  sending  down  extra  roots  like  guy 
ropes  for  anchorhold.     The  tree  uncrowded  by  its 
fellows  shoots  up  straight  as  a  mast  pole,  whorl  on 
whorl  of  its  branches  spelling  its  years  in  a  century 
census.     It  is  the  crowded  trees  that  show  their  al- 
most human  craft,  their  instinct  of  will  to  live  — 
corkscrewing   sidewise    for  light,    forking    into   two 
branches  where  one  branch  is  broken  or  shaded,  twist- 
ing and  bending,  ever  seeking  the  light,  and  spread- 
ing out  only  when  they  reach  room  for  shoulder  swing 
at  the  top,  with  such  a  mechanism  of  pumping  ma- 
chinery to   hoist  barrels  of  water  up   from  secret 
springs  in  the  earth  as  man  has  not  devised  for  his 
own  use.     And  now,  when  the  crown  has  widened 
out  to  sun  and  air,  it  stops  growing  and  bears  its  seeds 
—  seeds  shaped  like  parachutes  and  canoes  and  sails 
and  wings,  to  overcome  the  law  of  its  own  fixity  — 
life  striving  to  surpass  itself,  as  the  symbolists  and  the 
scientists  say,  though  symbolist  and  scientist  would 
break  each  other's  heads  if  you  suggested  that  they 
both  preach  the  very  same  thing. 

And  a  lost  tree  is  like  a  lost  life;  utter  loss,  boot- 
less waste.     You  see  it  in  the  bleached  skeleton  spars 


THE  FORESTS  OF  THE  SOUTHWEST     43 

of  the  dead  forest  where  the  burn  has  run.  You  see 
it  where  the  wasteful  lumberman  has  come  cutting 
half-growns  and  leaving  stumps  of  full-growns  three 
or  four  feet  high  with  piles  of  dry  slash  to  carry  the 
first  chance  spark.  The  leaf  litter  here  would  have 
enriched  the  soil  and  the  waste  slash  would  keep  the 
poor  of  an  Eastern  city  in  fuel.  Once,  at  a  public 
meeting,  I  happened  to  mention  the  ranger's  rule  that 
stumps  must  be  cut  no  higher  than  eighteen  inches,  and 
the  fact  that  in  the  big  tree  region  of  the  Rocky 
Mountains  many  stumps  are  left  three  and  four  feet 
high.  Someone  took  smiling  exception  to  the  height 
of  those  stumps.  Yet  in  the  redwood  and  Douglas 
fir  country  stumps  are  cut,  not  four  feet,  but  nine  feet 
high,  leaving  waste  enough  to  build  a  small  house 
And  it  will  take  not  a  hundred,  not  two  hundred,  but 
a  thousand  years,  to  bring  up  a  second  growth  of  such 
trees. 

Sitting  down  to  dinner  at  a  little  mountain  inn,  I 
noticed  only  two  families  besides  ourselves;  and  they 
were  residents  of  the  mountain.  I  thought  of  those 
hotels  back  in  the  cities  daily  turning  away  health 
seekers. 

"  How  is  it  you  haven't  more  people  here,  when 
the  cities  can't  take  care  of  all  the  people  who  come?  " 
I  asked  the  woman  of  the  house. 

"  People  don't  seem  to  know  about  the  National 
Forests,"  she  said.  "  They  think  the  forests  are 
only  places  for  lumber  and  mills." 


CHAPTER  III 

THROUGH   THE    PECOS  NATIONAL   FORESTS   OF  NEW 

MEXICO 

THE  ordinary  Easterner's  idea  of  New  Mexico 
is  of  a  cloudless,  sun-scorched  land  where 
you  can  cook  an  egg  by  laying  it  on  the  sand 
any  day  in  the  year,  winter  or  summer.  Yet  when  I 
went  into  the  Pecos  National  Forest,  I  put  on  the 
heaviest  flannels  I  have  ever  worn  in  northernmost 
Canada  and  found  them  inadequate.  We  were 
blocked  by  four  feet  of  snow  on  the  trail;  and  one 
morning  I  had  to  break  the  ice  in  my  bedroom  pitcher 
to  get  washing  water.  To  be  sure,  it  is  hot  enough  in 
New  Mexico  at  all  seasons  of  the  year;  and  you  can 
cook  that  egg  all  right  if  you  keep  down  on  the  desert 
sands  of  the  southern  lowlands  and  mesas;  but  New 
Mexico  isn't  all  scorched  lowlands  and  burnt-up  mesas. 
You'll  find  your  egg  in  cold  storage  if  you  go  into  the 
different  National  Forests,  for  most  of  them  lie  above 
an  altitude  of  8,000  feet;  and  at  the  headwaters  of 
the  Pecos,  you  are  between  10,000  and  13,000  feet 
high,  according  as  you  camp  on  Baldy  Pecos,  or  the 
Truchas,  or  Grass  Mountain,  or  in  Horse-Thief 
Canon. 

There  are  several  other  ways  in  which  the  Na- 

44 


THROUGH  THE  PECOS  FORESTS     45 

tional  Forests  of  New  Mexico  discount  Eastern  ex- 
pectation. 

First  of  all,  they  are  cheap;  and  that  is  not  true  of 
the  majority  of  trips  through  the  West.  Ordinarily, 
it  costs  more  to  take  a  trip  to  the  wilds  of  the  West 
than  to  go  to  Europe.  What  with  enormous  dis- 
tances to  be  traversed  and  extortionate  hotel  charges, 
it  is  much  cheaper  to  go  to  Paris  than  to  San  Fran- 
cisco; but  this  is  not  true  of  the  Forests  of  New  Mex- 
ico. Prices  have  not  yet  been  jacked  up  to  "  all  the 
traffic  will  stand."  The  constant  half-hour  leak  of 
tips  at  every  turn  is  unknown.  If  you  gave  a  tip  to 
any  of  the  ranch  people  who  take  care  of  you  in  the 
National  Forests  of  Mexico,  the  chances  are  they 
would  hand  it  back,  leaving  you  a  good  deal  smaller 
than  you  feel  when  you  run  the  gauntlet  of  forty 
servitors  lined  up  in  a  Continental  hotel  for  tips.  In 
letters  of  gold,  let  it  be  written  across  the  face  of  the 
heavens  —  There  is  still  a  no-tip  land.  As  prices 
rule  to-day  in  New  Mexico,  you  can  literally  take  a 
holiday  cheaper  in  the  National  Forests  than  you  can 
stay  at  home.  Once  you  have  reached  the  getting 
off  place  from  the  transcontinental  railroad,  it  will  cost 
you  to  go  into  the  Forests  $4  an  hour  by  motor,  and 
the  roads  are  good  enough  to  make  a  long  trip  fast. 
In  fact,  you  can  set  down  the  cost  of  going  in  and  out 
at  not  less  than  $2,  nor  more  than  $4.  If  you  hire 
a  team  to  go  in,  it  will  not  cost  you  more  than  $4 
a  day,  including  driver,  driver's  meals  and  horse  feed. 
Or  you  may  still  buy  a  pony  in  New  Mexico  at  from 
$35  to  $60,  and  so  have  your  own  horse  for  a  six 


46     THROUGH  THE  PECOS  FORESTS 

weeks'  holiday.  To  rent  a  horse  by  the  month  would 
probably  not  cost  $20.  Set  your  going  in  charges 
down  at  $2  —  where  will  you  go?  All  through  the 
National  Forests  of  New  Mexico  are  ranch  houses, 
usually  old  Mexican  establishments  taken  over  and 
modernized,  where  you  can  board  at  from  $8  to  $10 
a  week.  Don't  picture  to  yourself  an  adobe  dwelling 
with  a  wash  basin  at  the  back  door  and  a  roller  towel 
that  has  been  too  popular;  that  day  has  been  long 
passed  in  the  ranches  of  New  Mexico.  The  chances 
are  the  adobe  has  been  whitewashed,  and  your  room 
will  look  out  either  on  the  little  courtyard  in  the  cen- 
ter, or  from  the  piazza  outside  down  the  valleys ;  and 
somewhere  along  the  courtyard  or  piazza  facing  the 
valley  will  be  a  modern  bathroom  with  hot  and  cold 
water.  The  dining-room  and  living-room  will  be 
after  the  style  of  the  old  Franciscan  Mission  archi- 
tecture that  dominates  all  the  architecture  of  the 
Southwest  —  conical  arches  opening  from  one  room 
into  another,  shut  off,  perhaps,  by  a  wicket  gate. 
Many  of  the  ranch  houses  are  flanked  by  dozens  of 
little  portable,  one-roomed  bungalows,  tar-paper  roof, 
shingle  wainscot,  and  either  white  tenting  or  mosquito 
wire  halfway  up ;  and  this  is  by  all  odds  the  best  type 
of  room  for  the  health  seeker  who  goes  to  New  Mex- 
ico. He  endangers  neither  himself  nor  others  by 
housing  close  to  neighbors.  In  fact,  the  number  of 
health  seekers  living  in  such  little  portable  boxes  has 
become  so  great  in  New  Mexico  that  they  are  locally 
known  as  "  tent-dwellers."  It  need  scarcely  be  said 
that  there  are  dozens  and  dozens  of  ranch  houses  that 


THROUGH  THE  PECOS  FORESTS     47 

will  not  take  tuberculous  patients ;  so  there  is  no  dan- 
ger to  ordinary  comers  seeking  a  holiday  in  the  Na- 
tional Forests.  On  the  other  hand,  there  is  no  hard- 
ship worked  on  the  invalid.  For  a  sum  varying  from 
$50  to  $100,  he  can  buy  his  own  ready-made,  portable 
house ;  and  arrangements  can  easily  be  made  for  send- 
ing in  meals. 

The  next  surprise  about  the  National  Forests  of 
New  Mexico  is  the  excellence  of  roads  and  trails. 
You  can  go  into  the  very  heart  of  most  of  the  Forests 
by  motor,  of  all  of  the  Forests  by  team  (be  sure  to 
hire  a  strong  wagon)  ;  and  you  can  ride  almost  to  the 
last  lap  of  the  highest  peaks  along  bridle  trails  that 
are  easy  to  the  veriest  beginner.  In  the  Pecos  Forest 
are  five  or  six  hundred  miles  of  such  trails  cut  by  the 
rangers  as  their  patrol  route;  and  New  Mexico  has 
for  some  seasons  been  cutting  a  graded  wagon  road 
clear  across  the  ridges  of  two  mountain  ranges,  a 
great  scenic  highway  from  Santa  Fe  to  Las  Vegas, 
from  eight  to  ten  thousand  feet  above  sea  level.  One 
of  the  most  marvelous  roads  in  the  world  it  will  be 
when  it  is  finished,  skirting  inaccessible  canons,  shy 
Alpine  lakes  and  the  eternal  snows  all  through  such 
a  forest  of  huge  mast  pole  yellow  pine  as  might  be 
the  park  domain  of  some  old  baronial  lord  on  the 
Rhine.  This  road  is  now  built  halfway  from  each 
end.  It  is  not  clear  of  snow  at  the  highest  points 
till  well  on  to  the  end  of  May;  but  you  can  enter  the 
Pecos  at  any  season  at  right  angles  to  this  road,  go- 
ing up  the  canon  from  south  to  north. 

The  great  surprise  in  the  National  Forests  of  New 


48     THROUGH  THE  PECOS  FORESTS 

Mexico  is  the  great  plenitude  of  game ;  and  I  suppose 
the  Pecos  of  New  Mexico  and  the  White  Mountains 
of  Arizona  are  the  only  sections  of  America  of  which 
this  can  still  be  said.  In  two  hours,  you  can  pull  out 
of  the  Pecos  more  trout  than  your  entire  camp  can 
eat  in  two  days.  Wild  turkey  and  quail  still  abound. 
Mountain  lion  and  wildcat  are  still  so  frequent  that 
they  constitute  a  peril  to  the  deer,  and  the  Forest 
Service  actually  needs  hunters  to  clear  them  out  for 
preservation  of  the  turkey  and  deer.  As  for  bear, 
as  many  as  eight  have  been  trapped  in  three  weeks 
on  the  Sangre  de  Christo  Range.  In  one  of  the 
canons  forking  off  the  Pecos  at  right  angles,  twenty- 
six  were  trapped  and  shot  in  three  months. 

Lastly,  the  mountain  canons  of  New  Mexico  are 
second  in  grandeur  to  none  in  the  world.  People  here 
have  not  caught  the  climbing  mania  yet;  that  will 
come.  But  there  are  snow  peaks  of  13,500  feet  yet 
awaiting  the  conqueror,  and  the  scenery  of  the  Upper 
Pecos  might  be  a  section  of  the  Alps  or  Canadian 
Rockies  set  bodily  down  in  New  Mexico.  And  please 
to  remember  —  with  all  these  advantages,  cheapness, 
good  accommodation,  excellent  trails  and  abundance 
of  game  —  these  National  Forests  of  New  Mexico 
are  only  one  day  from  Kansas  City,  only  two  days 
from  Chicago,  only  sixty  hours  from  New  York  or 
Washington,  which  seems  to  prove  that  the  National 
Forests  are  as  much  a  possession  to  the  East  as  to  the 
West. 

You  can  strike  into  the  Pecos  in  one  of  three  ways : 
by  Santa  Fe,  by  Las  Vegas,  or  by  Glorieta,  all  on  the 


THROUGH  THE  PECOS  FORESTS     49 

main  line  of  the  railroad.  I  entered  by  way  of  Glori- 
eta  because  snow  still  packed  the  upper  portions  of  the 
scenic  highway  from  Santa  Fe  and  Las  Vegas.  As 
the  train  pants  up  over  the  arid  hills,  6,000,  7,000, 
7,500  feet,  you  would  never  guess  that  just  behind 
these  knolls  of  scrub  pine  and  juniper,  the  foothills 
rolling  back  to  the  mountains,  whose  snow  peaks  you 
can  see  on  the  blue  horizon,  present  a  heavy  growth 
of  park-like  yellow  pine  forests  —  trees  eighty  to 
150  feet  high,  straight  as  a  mast,  clear  of  under- 
branching  and  underbrush,  interspersed  with  cedar  and 
juniper  and  Engelmann  spruce.  Ten  years  ago,  be- 
fore the  Pecos  was  taken  in  the  National  Forests, 
goats  and  sheep  ate  these  young  pine  seedlings  down 
to  the  ground;  but  of  late,  herds  have  been  permitted 
only  where  the  seedlings  have  made  headway  enough 
to  resist  trampling,  and  thousands  of  acres  are  grow- 
ing up  to  seedling  yellow  pines  as  regular  and  thrifty 
as  if  set  out  by  nurserymen.  In  all,  the  Pecos  Forest 
includes  some  750,000  acres;  and  in  addition  to  nat- 
ural seeding,  the  Forest  men  are  yearly  harrowing  in 
five  or  six  hundred  acres  of  yellow  pine;  so  that  in 
twenty-five  years  this  Forest  is  likely  to  be  more 
densely  wooded  than  in  its  primeval  state. 

The  train  dumps  you  off  at  Glorieta,  a  little  adobe 
Mexican  town  hedged  in  by  the  arid  foothills,  with 
ten-acre  farm  patches  along  the  valley  stream,  of  won- 
derfully rich  soil,  every  acre  under  the  ditch,  a  home- 
macle  system  of  irrigation  which  dates  back  to  Indian 
days  when  the  Spanish  first  came  in  the  fifteen  hun- 
dreds and  found  the  same  little  checkerboard  farm 


50     THROUGH  THE  PECOS  FORESTS 

patches  under  the  same  primitive  ditch  system.  A 
glance  tells  you  that  nearly  all  these  peon  farms  are 
goat  ranches.  The  goats  scrabble  up  over  the  hills; 
and  on  the  valley  fields  the  farmer  raises  corn  and 
oats  enough  to  support  his  family  and  his  stock.  We, 
in  the  East,  who  pay  from  $175  to  $250  for  a  horse, 
and  twenty  to  thirty  cents  a  pound  for  our  meat,  open 
our  eyes  wide  with  wonder  when  we  learn  that  horses 
can  still  be  bought  here  for  from  $35  to  $60  and  meat 
at  $2  a  sheep.  To  be  sure,  this  means  that  the  peon 
Mexican  farmer  does  not  wax  opulent,  but  he  does  not 
want  to  wax  opulent;  $40  or  $100  a  year  keeps  him 
better  than  $400  or  $1,000  would  keep  you;  and  a 
happier  looking  lot  of  people  you  never  saw  than 
these  swarthy  descendants  of  old  Spain  still  plowing 
with  single  horse  wooden  plows,  with  nothing  better 
for  a  barn  than  a  few  sticks  stuck  up  with  a  wattle 
roof. 

Then  suddenly,  it  dawns  on  you  —  this  is  not  Amer- 
ica at  all.  It  is  a  bit  of  old  Spain  picked  up  three 
centuries  ago  and  set  down  here  in  the  wilderness  of 
New  Mexico,  with  a  sprinkling  of  outsiders  seeking 
health,  and  a  sprinkling  of  nondescripts  seeking  doors 
in  and  out  of  mischief.  The  children  in  bright  red 
and  blue  prints  playing  out  squat  in  the  fresh-plowed 
furrows,  the  women  with  red  shawls  over  heads, 
brighter  skirts  tucked  up,  sprawling  round  the  adobe 
house  doorways,  the  goats  bleating  on  the  red  sand 
hills  —  all  complete  the  illusion  that  you  have  waked 
up  in  some  picturesque  nook  of  old  Spain.  What 
Quebec  is  to  Canada,  New  Mexico  is  to  the  United 


THROUGH  THE  PECOS  FORESTS     51 

States  —  a  mosaic  \n  color;  a  bit  of  the  Old  World 
set  down  in  the  New;  a  relic  of  the  historic  and  the 
picturesque  not  yet  sandpapered  into  the  common- 
place by  the  friction  of  progress  and  democracy.  I 
confess  I  am  glad  of  it.  I  am  glad  there  are  still  two 
nooks  in  America  where  simple  folk  are  happy  just  to 
be  alive,  undisturbed  by  the  "  over-weaning  ambition 
that  over-vaulteth  itself  "  and  falls  back  in  social  envy 
and  class  hate.  "  Our  people,  no,  they  are  not  am- 
bish!  "  said  an  old  Mexican  to  me.  "  Dey  do  not 
wish  wealfth  —  no  —  we  have  dis,"  pointing  to  all 
his  own  earthly  belongings  in  the  little  whitewashed 
adobe  room,  "  and  now  I  will  read  you  a  little  poem 
I'  make  on  de  snow  mountains.  Hah !  Iss  not  dis 
good?" 

"  Mighty  good,"  though  I  was  not  thinking  of  the 
poem.  I  was  thinking  of  the  spirit  that  is  contented 
enough  to  see  poetry  in  the  great  white  mountains 
through  the  door  of  a  little  whitewashed  adobe  room; 
and  in  this  case,  it  was  a  sick  room.  Presently,  he 
got  up  out  of  his  bed,  and  donned  an  old  military 
cape,  and  came  out  in  the  sunlight  to  have  me  photo- 
graph him,  so  that  his  friends  would  have  it  after. 

Having  reached  Glorieta,  you  have  decided  which 
of  the  many  ranch  houses  in  the  Pecos  Forest  you  will 
stay  at;  or  if  you  have  not  decided,  a  few  words  of 
inquiry  with  the  station  agent  or  a  Forest  Service  man 
will  put  you  wise;  and  you  telephone  in  for  rig  or 
motor  to  come  out  for  you.  Any  normal  traveler 
does  not  need  to  be  told  that  these  ranch  houses  are 


52     THROUGH  THE  PECOS  FORESTS 

not  regular  boarding  houses  as  you  understand  that 
term ;  but  as  a  great  many  travelers  are  not  normal, 
perhaps  I  should  explain.  The  custom  of  taking 
strangers  has  arisen  from  those  old  days  when  there 
were  no  inns  and  all  passers-by  were  given  beds  and 
meals  as  a  matter  of  course.  Those  days  are  past, 
but  luckily  for  outsiders,  the  custom  survives ;  only  re- 
member while  you  pay,  you  go  as  a  guest,  and  must 
not  expect  a  valet  to  clean  your  boots  and  to  quake  at 
any  discord  of  nerves  untuned  by  the  jar  of  town. 

In  half  an  hour  after  leaving  the  transcontinental 
train,  we  were  spinning  out  by  motor  to  the  well- 
known  Harrison  Ranch,  the  rolling,  earth-baked  hills 
gradually  rising,  the  forest  growth  thickening,  the  lit- 
tle checkerboard  farms  taking  on  more  and  more  the 
appearance  of  settlement  than  on  the  desert  which 
the  railroads  traverse.  Presently,  at  an  elevation  of 
8,000  feet;  we  pulled  up  in  Pecos  Town  before  the 
long,  low,  whitewashed  ranch  house,  the  two  ends 
coming  back  in  an  L  round  the  court,  the  main  en- 
trance on  the  other  side  of  it.  You  expected  to  find 
wilderness.  Well,  there  is  an  upright  piano,  and 
there  is  a  gramophone  with  latest  musical  records, 
and  close  by  the  davenport  where  hangs  a  grizzly  bear 
pelt,  stands  a  banjo.  You  have  scarcely  got  travel 
togs  off  before  dinner  is  sounded  by  the  big  copper 
ranch  bell  hung  on  the  piazza  after  the  fashion  of 
the  Missions. 

After  dinner,  you  go  over  to  the  Supervisor's  office 
for  advice  on  going  up  the  canon.  Technically,  this 
is  not  necessary ;  but  it  is  wise  for  a  great  many  rea- 


THROUGH  THE  PECOS  FORESTS     53 

sons.  He  will  tell  you  where  to  get,  and  what  to  pay 
for,  your  camp  outfit;  where  to  go  and  how  to  go. 
He  will  show  you  a  map  with  the  leading  trails  and 
advise  you  as  to  the  next  stopping  place.  To  hunt 
predatory  animals  —  bear  and  wolf  and  cat  and 
mountain  lion  —  you  need  no  permit;  but  if  you  are 
an  outsider,  you  need  one  to  get  trout  and  turkey  and 
deer.  Another  point:  are  you  aware  that  you  are 
going  into  a  country  as  large  as  two  or  three  of  the 
Eastern  States  put  together;  and  that  the  forests  in 
the  upper  canons  are  very  dense ;  and  that  you  might 
get  lost;  and  that  it  is  a  good  thing  to  leave  some- 
body on  the  outside  edge  who  knows  where  you  have 
gone? 

On  my  way  back  from  the  Supervisor's  office,  the 
sick  man  called  me  in  and  told  me  his  life  story  and 
showed  me  his  poem.  As  he  is  a  Mexican,  has  been 
a  delegate  to  the  Constitutional  Convention  and  is 
somewhat  of  a  politician,  it  may  be  worth  while  set- 
ting down  his  views. 

"What  is  going  to  happen  in  Old  Mexico?  " 
"  Ah,  only  one  t'ing  possible  —  los  Americanos  must 
go  in." 

"Why?" 

;' Well,"  with  a  shrug,  "Diaz  cannot  —  cannot 
control.  Madero,  he  cannot  control  better  dan  Diaz. 
Los  Americanos  must  go  in." 

It  is  a  bit  of  a  surprise  to  find  in  this  little  Pecos 
Town  of  adobe  huts  set  down  higgledy-piggledy  a  tiny 
stone  church  with  stained  glass  windows,  a  little  gem 
in  a  wilderness.  I  slipped  through  the  doors  and  sat 


54     THROUGH  THE  PECOS  FORESTS 

watching  the  sunset  through  the  colored  windows  and 
dreaming  of  the  devotees  whose  ideals  had  been  built 
into  the  stones  of  these  quiet  walls. 

Three  miles  lower  down  the  valley  is  a  still  older 
church  built  in  —  well,  they  tell  you  all  the  way  from 
1548  and  1600  to  1700.  I  dare  say  the  middle  date 
is  the  nearest  right.  At  all  events,  the  bronze  bell 
of  this  old  ruin  dated  before  1700 ;  and  when  prepara- 
tions were  under  way  for  the  Chicago  World's  Fair, 
these  old  Mission  bells  were  so  much  in  demand  that 
the  prices  went  up  to  $500;  and  the  Mexicans  of  Pe- 
cos  were  so  fearful  of  the  desecrating  thief  that  they 
carried  this  ancient  bell  away  and  buried  it  in  the 
mountains  —  where,  no  man  knows :  it  has  never  since 
been  found.  You  have  been  told  so  often  that  the 
mountains  of  America  lack  human  and  historic  interest 
that  you  have  almost  come  to  believe  it.  Does  all 
this  sound  like  lack  of  human  interest  ?  Yet  it  is  most 
of  it  8,000  feet  above  sea  level,  and  much  of  it  on  the 
top  of  the  snow  peaks  between  ten  and  thirteen  thou- 
sand feet  up. 

At  eight  o'clock  Tuesday,  April  1 8,  I  set  out  up  the 
canon  with  a  span  of  stout,  heavy  horses,  an  excep- 
tionally strong  democrat  wagon,  and  a  very  careful 
Mexican  driver.  To  those  who  know  mountain 
travel,  I  do  not  need  to  describe  the  trails  up  Pecos 
Canon.  I  consider  it  a  safer  road  than  Broadway, 
New  York,  or  Piccadilly,  London;  but  people  from 
Broadway  or  Piccadilly  might  not  consider  it  so.  It 
isn't  a  trail  for  a  motor  car,  though  the  scenic  high- 


THROUGH  THE  PECOS  FORESTS     55 

way  cutting  this  at  right  angles  will  be  when  it  is 
finished;  and  it  isn't  a  trail  for  a  fool.  The  pedes- 
trian who  jumps  forward  and  then  back  in  dodging 
motors  on  Broadway,  might  turn  several  somersaults 
down  this  trail  if  trying  experiments  in  the  way  of 
jumping.  The  trail  is  just  the  width  of  the  wagon, 
and  it  clings  to  the  mountain  side  above  the  brawling 
waters  in  Pecos  Canon,  now  down  on  a  level  with  the 
torrent,  now  high  up  edging  round  ramparts  of  rock 
sheer  as  a  wall.  You  load  your  wagon  the  heavier 
on  the  inner  side  both  going  and  coming;  and  you  sit 
with  your  weight  on  the  inner  side;  and  the  driver 
keeps  the  brakes  pretty  well  jammed  down  on  sharp 
in-curves  and  the  horses  headed  close  in  to  the  wall. 
With  care,  there  is  no  danger  whatever.  Lumber 
teams  traverse  the  road  every  day.  With  careless- 
ness —  well,  last  summer  a  rig  and  span  and  four  oc- 
cupants went  over  the  edge  head  first:  nobody  hurt, 
as  the  steep  slope  is  heavily  wooded  and  you  can't 
slide  far. 

Ranch  after  ranch  you  pass  with  the  little  portable 
houses  for  "  the  tent  dwellers;  "  and  let  it  be  empha- 
sized that  well  folk  must  be  careful  how  they  go  into 
quarters  which  tuberculous  patients  have  had.  Carry 
your  own  collapsible  drinking  cup.  Cabins  and  camps 
of  city  people  from  Texas,  from  the  Pacific  Coast, 
from  Europe,  dot  the  level  knolls  where  the  big  pines 
stand  like  sentinels,  and  the  rocks  shade  from  wind 
and  heat,  and  the  eddying  brook  encircles  natural  lawn 
in  trout  pools  and  miniature  waterfalls.  Wherever 
the  canon  widens  to  little  fields,  the  Mexican  farmer's 


56     THROUGH  THE  PECOS  FORESTS 

adobe  hut  stands  by  the  roadside  with  an  intake  ditch 
to  irrigate  the  farm.  The  road  corkscrews  up  and 
up,  in  and  out,  round  rock  flank  and  rampart  and  bat- 
tlement, where  the  canon  forks  to  right  and  left  up 
other  forested  canons,  many  of  which,  save  for  the 
hunter,  have  never  known  human  tread.  Straight 
ahead  north  there,  as  you  dodge  round  the  rocky 
abutments  crisscrossing  the  stream  at  a  dozen  fords, 
loom  walls  and  domes  of  snow,  Baldy  Pecos,  a  great 
ridge  of  white,  the  two  Truchas  Peaks  going  up  in 
sharp  summits.  The  road  is  called  twenty  miles  as 
the  crow  flies;  but  this  is  not  a  trail  as  the  crow  flies. 
You  are  zigzagging  back  on  your  own  track  a  dozen 
places;  and  there  is  no  lie  as  big  as  the  length  of  a 
mile  in  the  mountains,  especially  when  the  wheels  go 
over  stones  half  their  own  size.  Where  the  snow 
peaks  rear  their  summits  is  the  head  of  Pecos  Canon 

—  a  sort  of  snow  top  to  the  sides  of  a  triangle,  the 
Santa  Fe  Range  shutting  off  the  left  on  the  west,  the 
Las  Vegas  or  Sangre  de  Christo  Mountains  walling 
in  the  right  on  the  east.     I  know  of  nothing  like  it 
for  grandeur  in  America  except  the  Rockies  round 
Laggan  in  Canada. 

I  had  put  on  heaviest  flannels  in  the  morning;  and 
now  donned  in  addition  a  cowboy  slicker  and  was  cold 

—  this  in  a  land  where  the  Easterner  thinks  you  can 
sizzle  eggs  by  laying  them  on  the  sand.     An  old  Mex- 
ican jumps  into  the  front  seat  with  the  driver  near  a 
deserted  mining  camp,  and  the  two  sing  snatches  of 
Spanish  songs  as  we  ascend  the  canon.     Promptly  at 
twelve,  Tomaso  turns  back  and  asks  me  the  time. 


THROUGH  THE  PECOS  FORESTS     57 

When  I  say  it  is  dinner,  he  digs  out  of  his  box  a  paper 
of  soda  biscuits  and  asks  me  to  "  have  a  crack."  To 
reciprocate  that  kindness,  I  loan  him  my  collapsible 
drinking  cup  to  go  down  to  the  canon  for  some  water. 
Tomaso's  courtesy  is  not  to  be  outdone.  After  using, 
he  dries  that  cup  off  with  an  ancient  bandana,  which  I 
am  quite  sure  has  been  used  for  ten  years;  but  for- 
tunately he  does  not  offer  me  a  drink. 

Winsor's  Ranch  marks  the  end  of  the  wagon  road 
up  the  canon.  From  this  point,  travel  must  be  on 
foot  or  horseback;  and  though  the  snow  peaks  seem 
to  wall  in  the  north,  they  are  really  fifteen  miles  away 
with  a  dozen  canons  heavily  forested  like  fields  of 
wheat  between  you  and  them.  In  fact,  if  you  followed 
up  any  of  these  side  canons,  you  would  find  them,  too, 
dotted  with  ranch  houses;  but  beyond  them,  upper 
reaches  yet  untrod. 

Up  to  the  right,  above  a  grove  of  white  aspens 
straight  and  slender  as  a  bamboo  forest,  is  a  rounded, 
almost  bare  lookout  peak  10,000  feet  high  known  as 
Grass  Mountain.  We  zigzag  up  the  lazy  switchback 
trail,  past  the  ranger's  log  cabin,  past  a  hunting  lodge 
of  some  Texas  club,  through  the  fenced  ranch  fields 
of  some  New  York  health  seekers  come  to  this  10,000 
feet  altitude  horse  ranching;  and  that  brings  up  an- 
other important  feature  of  the  "  tent  dwellers  "  in 
New  Mexico.  There  is  nothing  worse  for  the  con- 
sumptive than  idle  time  to  brood  over  his  own  depres- 
sion. If  he  can  combine  outdoor  sleeping  and  out- 
door living  and  twelve  hours  of  sunshine  in  a  climate 
of  pure  ozone  with  an  easy  occupation,  conditions  are 


58     THROUGH  THE  PECOS  FORESTS 

almost  ideal  for  recovery;  and  that  is  what  thousands 
are  doing  —  combining  light  farming,  ranching,  or 
fruit  growing  with  the  search  for  health.  We  passed 
the  invalid's  camp  chair  on  this  ranch  where  "  broncho 
breaking  "  had  been  in  progress. 

Grass  Mountain  is  used  as  a  lookout  station  for 
fires  on  the  Upper  Pecos.  The  world  literally  lies 
at  your  feet.  You  have  all  the  exaltation  of  the 
mountain  climber  without  the  travail  and  labor;  for 
the  rangers  have  cut  an  easy  trail  up  the  ridge;  and 
you  stand  with  the  snow  wall  of  the  peaks  on  your 
north,  the  crumpled,  purpling  masses  of  the  Santa  Fe 
Range  across  the  Pecos  Canon,  and  the  whole  Pecos 
Valley  below  you.  Not  a  fire  can  start  up  for  a  hun- 
dred miles  but  the  mushroom  cone  of  smoke  is  visible 
from  Grass  Mountain  and  the  rangers  spur  to  the 
work  of  putting  the  fire  out.  Though  thousands  of 
outsiders  camp  and  hunt  in  Pecos  Canon  every  year, 
not  $50  loss  has  occurred  through  fire;  and  the  fire 
patrol  costs  less  than  $47  a  year.  The  "  why  "  of  this 
compared  to  the  fire-swept  regions  of  Idaho  is  simply 
a  matter  of  trails.  The  rangers  have  cut  five  or  six 
hundred  miles  of  trails  all  through  the  Pecos,  along 
which  they  can  spur  at  breakneck  speed  to  put  out 
fires.  In  Idaho  and  Washington,  thanks  to  the  petty 
spites  of  local  congressmen  and  senators,  the  Service 
has  been  so  crippled  by  lack  of  funds  that  fewer  trails 
have  been  cut  through  that  heavy  Northwest  timber; 
and  men  cannot  get  out  on  the  ground  soon  enough  to 
stop  the  fire  while  it  is  small.  So  harshly  has  the 
small-minded  policy  of  penuriousness  reacted  on  the 


THROUGH  THE  PECOS  FORESTS     59 

Service  in  the  Northwest  that  last  year  the  rangers 
had  to  take  up  a  subscription  among  themselves  to 
bury  the  men  who  perished  fighting  fire.  Pecos  Serv- 
ice, too,  had  its  struggle  against  spite  and  incendia- 
rism in  the  old  days;  but  that  is  a  story  long  past;  and 
to-day,  Pecos  stands  as  an  example  of  what  good  trail 
making  will  do  to  prevent  fires. 

We  walked  across  the  almost  flat  table  of  Grass 
Mountain  and  looked  down  the  east  side  into  the  Las 
Vegas  Canon.  Four  feet  of  snow  still  clung  to  the 
east  side  of  Grass  Mountain,  almost  a  straight  preci- 
pice; and  across  the  forested  valley  lay  another  ten 
or  twelve  feet  of  snow  on  the  upper  peaks  of  the 
Sangre  de  Christo  Range.  A  pretty  legend  clings 
to  that  Sangre  de  Christo  Range ;  and  because  people 
repeat  the  foolish  statement  that  America's  mountains 
lack  legend  and  lore,  I  shall  repeat  it,  though  it  is  so 
very  old.  The  holy  padre  was  jogging  along  on  his 
mule  one  night  leading  his  little  pack  burro  behind,  but 
so  deeply  lost  in  his  vesper  thoughts  that  he  forgot 
time  and  place.  Suddenly,  the  mule  stopped  midway 
in  the  trail.  The  holy  father  looked  up  suddenly  from 
his  book  of  devotions.  The  rose-tinted  afterglow  of 
an  Alpine  sunset  lay  on  the  glistening  snows  of  the 
great  silent  range.  He  muttered  an  Ave  Maria; 
"Praise  be  God,"  he  said;  "  for  the  Blood  of 
Christ;  "  and  as  Sangre  de  Christo  the  great  white 
ridge  has  been  known  ever  since. 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE  CITY  OF  THE  DEAD  IN  FRIJOLES  CANON 

I  AM  sitting  in  one  of  the  caves  of  the  Stone  Age. 
This  is  not  fiction  but  fact.  I  am  not  specu- 
lating as  to  how  those  folk  of  neolithic  times 
lived.  I  am  writing  in  one  of  the  cliff  houses  where 
they  lived,  sitting  on  the  floor  with  my  feet  resting  on 
the  steps  of  an  entrance  stone  stairway  worn  hip-deep 
through  the  volcanic  rock  by  the  moccasined  tread 
of  aeons  of  ages.  Through  the  cave  door,  looking 
for  all  the  world  from  the  outside  like  a  pigeon  box, 
I  can  see  on  the  floor  of  the  valley  a  community  house 
of  hundreds  of  rooms,  and  a  sacred  kiva  or  ceremonial 
chamber  where  gods  of  fire  and  water  were  invoked, 
and  a  circular  stone  floor  where  men  and  women 
danced  the  May-pole  before  Julius  Caesar  was  born, 
before  —  if  Egyptian  archaeologists  be  correct  —  the 
dynasties  of  the  Nile  erected  Pyramid  and  Sphinx  to 
commemorate  their  own  oblivion.  To  my  right  and 
left  for  miles  —  for  twelve  miles,  to  be  correct  — 
are  thousands  of  such  cave  houses  against  the  face 
of  the  cliff,  as  the  one  in  which  I  now  write.  Boxed 
up  by  the  snow-covered  Jemez  (Hamez)  Mountains 
at  one  end,  with  a  black  basalt  gash  in  the  rock  at  the 
other  end  through  which  roars  a  mountain  torrent 
and  waterfalls  too  narrow  for  two  men  to  walk 

60 


THE  CITY  OF  THE  DEAD  61 

abreast,  with  vertical  walls  of  yellow  pumice  straight 
up  and  down  as  if  leveled  by  a  giant  trowel,  in  this 
valley  of  the  Frijoles  waters  once  dwelt  a  nation, 
dead  and  gone  before  the  Spaniards  came  to  America, 
vanished  leaving  not  the  shadow  of  a  record  behind 
long  before  William  the  Conqueror  crossed  to  Eng- 
land, contemporaneous,  perhaps  —  for  all  science 
knows  to  the  contrary  —  with  that  20,000  B.  C. 
Egpytian  desert  runner  lying  in  the  British  Museum. 

Lying  in  my  tent  camp  last  night  listening  to  coyote 
and  fox  barking  and  to  owls  hooting  from  the  dead 
silent  city  of  the  yellow  cliff  wall,  I  fell  to  wondering 
on  this  puzzle  of  archaeologist  and  historian  — 
what  desolated  these  bygone  nations?  The  theory 
of  desiccation,  or  drought,  so  plausible  elsewhere, 
doesn't  hold  for  one  minute  when  you  are  here  on 
the  spot;  for  there  is  the  mountain  brook  brawling 
through  the  Valley  not  five  minutes'  scramble  from 
any  one  of  these  caves ;  and  there  on  the  far  western 
sky-line  are  the  snows  of  the  Jemez  Mountains,  which 
must  have  fed  this  brook  since  this  part  of  the  earth 
began.  Was  it  war,  or  pestilence,  or  captivity,  that 
made  of  the  populous  city  a  den  of  wolves,  a  resort 
for  hoot  owl  and  bittern  and  fox?  If  pestilence,  then 
why  are  the  skeletons  not  found  in  the  great  ossuaries 
and  masses  that  mark  the  pestilential  destruction  of 
other  Indian  races?  There  remain  only  the  alterna- 
tives of  war,  or  captivity;  and  of  either,  not  the  ves- 
tige of  a  shadow  of  a  tradition  remains.  One  man's 
guess  is  as  good  as  another's;  and  the  scientist's 
guesses  vary  all  the  way  from  8,000  B.  C.  to  400  A. 


^2  THE  CITY  OF  THE  DEAD 

D.  So  there  you  are !  You  have  as  good  a  right  to  a 
guess  as  the  highest  scientist  of  them  all ;  and  while  I 
refrain  from  speculation,  I  want  to  put  on  record  the 
definite,  provable  fact  that  these  people  of  the  Stone 
Age  were  not  the  gibbering,  monkey-tailed  maniacs  of 
claw  finger  nails  and  simian  jaw  which  the  half-baked 
pseudo-evolutionist  loves  to  picture  of  Stone  Age  deni- 
zens. As  Jack  Donovan,  a  character  working  at 
Judge  Abbott's  in  the  Valley  said  —  "  Sure,  monkey 
men  wud  a'  had  a  haard  time  scratchin'  thro'  thim 
cliffs  and  makin'  thim  holes  in  the  rocks."  Remnants 
of  shard  and  pottery,  structure  of  houses,  decorations 
and  woven  cloths  and  skins  found  wrapped  as  cere- 
ments round  the  dead  all  prove  that  these  men  were  a 
sedentary  and  for  that  age  civilized  people.  When 
our  Celt  and  Saxon  ancestors  were  still  chasing  wild 
boars  through  the  forests,  these  people  were  cultivat- 
ing corn  on  the  Upper  and  Lower  Mesas.  When 
Imperial  Rome's  common  populace  boasted  few  gar- 
ments but  the  ones  in  which  they  had  been  born,  these 
people  were  wearing  a  cloth  woven  of  fiber  and  rushes. 
When  European  courts  trod  the  stately  over  floors  of 
filthy  rushes,  these  cliff  dwellers  had  flooring  of  plaster 
and  cement,  and  rugs  of  beaver  and  wolf  and  bear. 
All  this  you  can  see  with  your  own  eyes  by  examining 
the  caves  and  skeletons  of  the  Jemez  Forests;  and  the 
fine  glaze  of  the  beautiful  pottery  work  is  as  lost  an 
art  as  the  pigments  of  old  Italy. 

As  you  go  into  the  Pecos  Forests  to  play,  so  you  go 
into  the  Jemez  to  dream.     You  go  to  Pecos  to  hunt 


THE  CITY  OF  THE  DEAD  63 

and  fish.  So  you  do  to  the  Jem.ez;  but  it  is  historic 
fact  you  are  hunting  and  a  reconstruction  of  the  record 
of  man  you  are  fishing  for.  As  the  Pecos  Forests  ap- 
peal to  the  strenuous  holiday  hunter  —  the  man  who 
considers  he  has  not  had  his  fun  till  he  has  broken  a 
leg  killing  a  bear,  or  stood  mid-waist  in  snow-water 
stringing  fish  on  a  line  like  beads  on  a  string  —  so  the 
Jemez  appeals  to  the  dreamer,  the  scholar,  the  scien- 
tist, the  artist;  and  I  can  imagine  no  more  ideal  (nor 
cheaper)  holiday  than  to  join  the  American  School  of 
Archaeology,  about  which  I  have  already  spoken,  that 
comes  in  here  with  scientists  from  every  quarter  of 
the  world  every  midsummer  to  camp,  and  dig,  and 
delve,  and  revel  in  the  past  of  moonlight  nights  round 
campfires  before  retiring  to  sleeping  quarters  in  the 
caves  along  the  face  of  the  cliff.  The  School  has 
been  a  going  concern  for  only  a  few  years.  Yet  last 
year  over  150  scientists  came  in  from  every  quarter 
of  the  globe. 

Spite  of  warnings  to  the  contrary  given  to  me  both 
East  and  West,  the  trip  to  the  Jemez  is  one  of  the 
easiest  and  cheapest  you  can  make  in  America.  You 
strike  in  from  Santa  Fe;  and  right  here,  let  me  set 
down  as  emphatically  as  possible,  two  or  three  things 
pleasant  and  unpleasant  about  Santa  Fe. 

First,  it  is  the  most  picturesque  and  antique  spot  in 
America,  not  excepting  Quebec.  Color,  age,  leisure; 
a  medley  of  races;  sand-hills  engirt  by  snow  sky-line 
for  eighty  miles;  the  honking  of  a  motor  blending 
with  the  braying  of  a  Mexican  burro  trotting  to  mar- 
ket loaded  out  of  sight  under  a  wood  pile;  Old  Spain 


64  THE  CITY  OF  THE  DEAD 

and  New  America ;  streets  with  less  system  and  order 
about  them  than  an  ant  hill,  with  a  modern  Woman's 
Board  of  Trade  that  will  make  you  mind  your  P's  and 
Q's  and  toe  the  sanitary  scratch  if  you  are  apt  to  be 
slack;  the  chimes,  and  chimes  and  chimes  yet  again  of 
old  Catholic  churches  right  across  from  a  Wild  West 
Show  where  a  throaty  band  is  screeching  Yankee- 
Doodle  ;  little  adobe  houses  where  I  never  quite  know 
whether  I  am  entering  by  the  front  door  or  the  back; 
the  Palace  where  Lew  Wallace  wrote  Ben  Hur,  and 
eighty  governors  of  three  different  nationalities  pre- 
ceded him,  and  where  the  Archaeological  Society  has 
its  rooms  with  Lotave's  beautiful  mural  paintings  of 
the  Cliff  Dwellers,  and  where  the  Historical  Society 
has  neither  room  nor  money  enough  to  do  what  it 
ought  in  a  region  that  is  such  a  mine  of  history. 
Such  is  Santa  Fe ;  the  only  bit  of  Europe  set  down  in 
America ;  I  venture  to  say  the  only  picturesque  spot  in 
America,  yet  undiscovered  by  the  jaded  globe-trotter. 
Second,  I  want  to  put  on  record  that  Santa  Fe 
should  be  black  ashamed  of  itself  for  hiding  its  light 
under  a  bushel.  Ask  a  Santa  Fe  man  why  in  the 
world,  with  all  its  attraction  of  the  picturesque,  the 
antique,  the  snowy  mountains,  and  the  weak-lunged 
one's  ideal  climate,  it  has  so  few  tourists ;  and  he  an- 
swers you  with  a  depreciatory  shrug  that  "  it's  off  the 
main  line."  "Off  the  main  line?"  So  is  Quebec 
off  the  main  line ;  yet  200,000  Americans  a  year  see  it. 
So  is  Yosemite  off  the  main  line;  and  10,000  people  go 
out  to  it  every  year.  I  have  never  heard  that  the 
Nile  and  the  Pyramids  and  the  Sphinx  were  on  the 


•e  this  entrance  to  a  cliff  dwelling  in  the  Jemez  Forest 
are    drawings    by   the    prehistoric    inhabitants 


THE  CITY  OF  THE  DEAD  65 

main  line ;  yet  foreigners  yearly  reap  a  fortune  cater- 
ing to  visiting  Americans.  Personally,  it  is  a  delight 
to  me  to  visit  a  place  untrodden  by  the  jaded  globe- 
trotter, for  I  am  one  myself;  but  whether  it  is  laziness 
that  prevents  Santa  Fe  blowing  its  own  horn,  or  the 
old  exclusive  air  bequeathed  to  it  by  the  grand  dons  of 
Spain  that  is  averse  to  sounding  the  brass  band,  I  love 
the  appealing,  picturesque,  inert  laziness  of  it  all;  but 
I  love  better  to  ask :  "  Why  go  to  Egypt,  when  you 
have  the  wonders  of  an  Egypt  unexplored  in  your  own 
land?  Why  scour  the  crowded  Alps  when  the 
snowy  domes  of  the  Santa  Fe  and  Jemez  and  Sangre 
de  Christo  lie  unexplored  only  an  easy  motor  ride 
from  your  hotel?  "  If  Santa  Fe,  as  it  is,  were  known 
to  the  big  general  public,  200,000  tourists  a  year 
would  find  delight  within  its  purlieus;  and  while  I  like 
the  places  untrodden  by  travelers,  still  —  being  an 
outsider,  myself, —  I  should  like  the  outsiders  to 
know  the  same  delight  Santa  Fe  has  given  me. 

To  finish  with  the  things  of  the  mundane,  you  strike 
in  to  Santa  Fe  from  a  desolate  little  junction  called 
Lamy,  where  the  railroad  has  built  a  picturesque 
little  doll's  house  of  a  hotel  after  the  fashion  of  an  old 
Spanish  mansion.  To  reach  the  Jemez  Forests  where 
the  ruins  of  the  Cave  Dwellers  exist,  you  can  drive  or 
motor  (to  certain  sections  only)  or  ride.  As  the  dis- 
tance is  forty  miles  plus,  you  will  find  it  safer  and  more 
comfortable  to  drive.  If  you  take  a  driver  and  a 
team,  and  keep  both  over  two  days,  it  will  cost  you 
from  $10  to  $14  for  the  round  trip.  If  you  go  in  on 
a  burro,  you  can  buy  the  burro  outright  for  $5  or  $10. 


66  THE  CITY  OF  THE  DEAD 

(Don't  mind  if  your  feet  do  drag  on  the  ground.  It 
will  save  being  pitched.)  If  you  go  out  with  the 
American  School  of  Archaeology  (Address  Santa  Fe 
for  particulars)  your  transportation  will  cost  you  still 
less,  perhaps  not  $2.  Once  out,  in  the  canons  of  the 
Cave  Dwellers,  you  can  either  camp  out  with  your  own 
tenting  and  food;  or  put  up  at  Judge  Abbott's  hospit- 
able ranch  house;  or  quarter  yourself  free  of  charge 
in  one  of  the  thousands  of  cliff  caves  and  cook  your 
own  food;  or  sleep  in  the  caves  and  pay  for  your 
meals  at  the  ranch.  At  most,  your  living  expenses 
will  not  exceed  $2  a  day.  If  you  do  your  own  cook- 
ing, they  need  not  be  $i  a  day. 

One  of  the  stock  excuses  for  Americans  not  seeing 
their  own  country  is  that  the  cost  is  so  extortionate. 
Does  this  sound  extortionate? 

I  drove  out  by  livery  because  I  was  not  sure  how 
else  to  find  the  way.  We  left  Santa  Fe  at  six  A.  M., 
the  clouds  still  tingeing  the  sand-hills,  I  have  heard 
Eastern  art  critics  say  that  artists  of  the  Southwest 
laid  on  their  colors  too  strongly  contrasted,  too 
glaring,  too  much  brick  red  and  yellow  ocher  and 
purple.  I  wish  such  critics  had  driven  out  with  me 
that  morning  from  Santa  Fe.  Gregoire  Pedilla,  the 
Mexican  driver,  grew  quite  concerned  at  my  silence 
and  ran  off  a  string  of  good-natured  nonsense  to  en- 
tertain me;  and  all  the  while,  I  wanted  nothing  but 
quiet  to  revel  in  the  intoxication  of  shifting  color. 
Twenty  miles  more  or  less,  we  rattled  over  the  sand- 
hills before  we  began  to  climb  in  earnest;  and  in  that 


THE  CITY  OF  THE  DEAD  67 

time  we  had  crossed  the  muddy,  swirling  Rio  Grande 
and  left  the  railroad  behind  and  passed  a  deserted 
lumber  camp  and  met  only  two  Mexican  teams  on  the 
way. 

From  below,  the  trail  up  looks  appalling.  It  seems 
to  be  an  ash  shelf  in  pumice-stone  doubling  back  and 
back  on  itself,  up  and  up,  till  it  drops  over  the  top  of 
the  sky-line ;  but  the  seeming  riskiness  is  entirely  decep- 
tive. Travel  wears  the  soft  volcanic  tufa  hub  deep 
in  ash  dust,  so  that  the  wheels  could  not  slide  off  if 
they  tried;  and  once  you  are  really  on  the  climb,  the 
ascent  is  much  more  gradual  than  it  looks.  In  fact, 
our  horses  took  it  at  a  trot  without  urging.  A  certain 
Scriptural  dame  came  to  permanent  grief  from  a  habit 
of  looking  back ;  but  you  will  miss  half  the  joy  of  going 
up  to  the  Pajarito  Plateau  if  you  do  not  look  back 
towards  Santa  Fe.  The  town  is  hidden  in  the  sand- 
hills. The  wreaths  have  gone  off  the  mountain,  and 
the  great  white  domes  stand  out  from  the  sky  for  a 
distance  of  eighty  miles  plain  as  if  at  your  feet,  with 
the  gashes  of  purple  and  lilac  where  the  passes  cut 
into  the  range.  Then  your  horses  take  their  last  turn 
and  you  are  on  top  of  a  foothill  mesa  and  see  quite 
plainly  why  you  have  to  drive  40  miles  in  order  to  go 
20.  Here,  White  Rock  Canon  lines  both  sides  of  the 
Rio  Grande  —  precipices  steep  and  sheer  as  walls,  cut 
sharp  off  at  the  top  as  a  huge  square  block;  and  com- 
ing into  this  canon  at  right  angles  are  the  canons 
where  lived  the  ancient  Cliff  Dwellers  —  some  of 
them  hundreds  of  feet  above  the  Rio  Grande,  with 
opening  barely  wide  enough  to  let  the  mountain 


68  THE  CITY  OF  THE  DEAD 

streams  fall  through.  To  reach  these  inaccessible 
canons,  you  must  drive  up  over  the  mesa,  though  the 
driver  takes  you  from  eight  to  ten  thousand  feet  up 
and  down  again  over  cliffs  like  a  stair. 

We  lunched  in  a  little  water  canon,  which  gashed 
the  mesa  side  where  a  mountain  stream  came  down. 
Such  a  camping  place  in  a  dry  land  is  not  to  be  passed 
within  two  hours  of  lunching  time,  for  in  some  parts 
of  the  Southwest  many  of  the  streams  are  alkali ;  and 
a  stream  from  the  snows  is  better  than  wine.  Beyond 
our  lunching  place  came  the  real  reason  for  this  par- 
ticular canon  being  inaccessible  to  motors  —  a  climb 
steep  as  a  stair  over  a  road  of  rough  bowlders  with 
sharp  climbing  turns,  which  only  a  Western  horse  can 
take.  Then,  we  emerged  on  the  high  upper 
mesa  —  acres  and  acres  of  it,  thousands  of  acres  of  it, 
open  like  a  park  but  shaded  by  the  stately  yellow  pine, 
and  all  of  it  above  ordinary  cloud-line,  still  girt  by 
that  snowy  range  of  opal  peaks  beyond.  We  fol- 
lowed the  trail  at  a  rattling  pace  —  the  Archaeological 
School  had  placed  signs  on  the  trees  to  Frijoles 
Canon  —  and  presently,  by  great  mounds  of  building 
stone  covered  feet  deep  by  the  dust  and  debris  of 
ages,  became  aware  that  we  were  on  historic  ground. 
Nor  can  the  theory  of  drought  explain  the  abandon- 
ment of  this  mesa.  While  it  rains  heavily  only  two 
months  in  the  year  —  July  and  August  —  the  mesa  is 
so  high  that  it  is  subject  to  sprinkling  rains  all  months 
of  the  year;  to  be  sure  not  enough  for  springs,  but 
ample  to  provide  forage  and  grow  corn;  and  for 
water,  these  sky-top  dwellers  had  access  to  the  water 


THE  CITY  OF  THE  DEAD  69 

canons  both  before  and  behind.  What  hunting 
ground  it  must  have  been  in  those  old  days!  Even 
yet  you  are  likely  to  meet  a  flock  of  wild  turkey  face 
to  face ;  or  see  a  mountain  lion  slink  away,  or  hear  the 
bark  of  coyote  and  fox. 

"  Is  this  it,  Gregoire?"  I  asked.  The  mound 
seemed  irregularly  to  cover  several  acres  —  pretty 
extensive  remains,  I  thought. 

"  Ah,  no  —  no  Sefiorita  —  wait,"  warned  Gre- 
goire expectantly. 

I  had  not  to  wait  long.  The  wagon  road  suddenly 
broke  off  short  and  plumb  as  if  you  tossed  a  biscuit 
over  the  edge  of  the  Flatiron  roof.  I  got  out  and 
looked  down  and  then  —  went  dumb !  Afterwards, 
Mrs.  Judge  Abbott  told  me  they  thought  I  was  afraid 
to  come  down.  It  wasn't  that!  The  thing  so  far 
surpassed  anything  I  had  ever  dreamed  or  seen;  and 
the  color  —  well  —  those  artists  accused  of  over- 
coloration  could  not  have  over-colored  if  they  had 
tried.  Pigments  have  not  been  invented  that  could 
do  it ! 

Picture  to  yourself  two  precipices  three  times  the 
height  of  Niagara,  three  times  the  height  of  the 
Metropolitan  Tower,  sheer  as  a  wall  of  blocked 
yellow  and  red  masonry,  no  wider  apart  than  you  can 
shout  across,  ending  in  the  snows  of  the  Jemez  to  the 
right,  shut  in  black  basalt  walls  to  the  left,  forested 
with  the  heavy  pines  to  the  very  edge  and  down  the 
blocky  tiers  of  rocks  and  escarpments  running  into 
blind  angles  where  rain  and  sun  have  dyed  the  terra 
cotta  pumice  blood-red.  And  picture  the  face  of  the 


70  THE  CITY  OF  THE  DEAD 

cliff  under  your  feet,  the  sides  of  the  massive  rocks 
eroded  to  the  shapes  of  tents  and  tepees  and  beehives, 
pigeon-holed  by  literally  thousands  of  windows  and 
doors  and  arched  caves  and  winding  recess  and  port- 
holes —  a  city  of  the  dead,  silent  as  the  dead,  old 
almost  as  time ! 

The  wind  came  soughing  up  the  canon  with  the 
sound  of  the  sea.  The  note  of  a  lonely  song  sparrow 
broke  the  silence  in  a  stab.  Somewhere,  down  among 
the  tender  green,  lining  the  canon  stream,  a  mourning 
dove  uttered  her  sad  threnody  —  then,  silence  and 
the  soughing  wind;  then,  more  silence;  then,  if  I  had 
done  what  I  wanted  to,  I  would  have  sat  down  on  the 
edge  of  the  canon  wall  and  let  the  palpable  past  come 
touching  me  out  of  the  silence. 

A  community  house  of  some  hundreds  of  rooms  lay 
directly  under  me  in  the  floor  of  the  valley.  This 
was  once  a  populous  city  twelve  miles  long,  a  city  of 
one  long  street,  with  the  houses  tier  on  tier  above  each 
other,  reached  by  ladders,  and  steps  worn  hip-deep  in 
the  stone.  Where  had  the  people  gone;  and  why? 
What  swept  their  civilization  away?  When  did  the 
age-old  silence  fall?  Seven  thousand  people  do  not 
leave  the  city  of  their  building  and  choice,  of  their 
loves  and  their  hates,  and  their  wooing  and  their 
weddings,  of  their  birth  and  their  deaths  —  do  not 
leave  without  good  reason.  What  was  the  reason? 
What  gave  this  place  of  beauty  and  security  and  thrift 
over  to  the  habitation  of  bat  and  wolf?  Why  did 
the  dead  race  go?  Did  they  flee  panic-stricken,  pur- 
sued like  deer  by  the  Apache  and  the  Ute  and  the 


THE  CITY  OF  THE  DEAD  71 

Navajo?  Or  were  they  marched  out  captives,  weep- 
ing? Or  did  they  fall  by  the  pestilence?  Answer 
who  can!  Your  guess  is  as  good  as  mine!  But 
there  is  the  sacred  ceremonial  underground  chamber 
where  they  worshiped  the  sacred  fire  and  the  plumed 
serpent,  guardian  of  the  springs;  where  the  young 
boys  were  taken  at  time  of  manhood  and  instructed 
in  virtue  and  courage  and  endurance  and  cleanliness 
and  reticence.  "  If  thou  art  stricken,  die  like  the 
deer  with  a  silent  throat,  "  says  the  adage  of  the 
modern  Pueblo  Indian.  "  When  the  foolish  speak, 
keep  thou  silent.  "  ;'  When  thou  goest  on  the  trail, 
carry  only  a  light  blanket."  Good  talk,  all  of  it,  for 
young  boys  coming  to  realize  themselves  and  life! 
And  there  farther  down  the  valley  is  the  stone  circle 
or  dancing  floor  where  the  people  came  down  from 
their  cliff  to  make  merry  and  express  in  rhythm  the 
emotions  which  other  nations  express  in  poetry  and 
music.  The  whole  city  must  have  been  the  grand- 
stand when  the  dancing  took  place  down  there. 

It  was  Gregoire  who  called  me  to  myself. 

'  We  cannot  take  the  wagon  down  there,  "  he  said. 
"  No  wagon  has  ever  gone  down  here.  You  walk 
down  slow  and  I  come  with  the  horses,  one  by  one.  " 

It  sounded  a  good  deal  easier  than  it  looked.  I 
haven't  seen  a  steeper  stair;  and  if  you  imagine  five 
ladders  trucked  up  zigzag  against  the  Flatiron  Build- 
ing and  the  Flatiron  Building  three  times  higher  than 
it  is,  you'll  have  an  idea  of  the  appearance  of  the  situ- 
ation; but  it  looked  a  great  deal  harder  than  it  really 
was,  and  the  trail  has  since  been  improved.  The  little 


72  THE  CITY  OF  THE  DEAD 

steps  cut  in  the  volcanic  tufa  or  white  pumice  are  soft 
and  offer  a  grip  to  foothold.  They  grit  to  your  foot- 
step and  do  not  slide  like  granite  and  basalt,  though  if 
New  Mexico  wants  to  make  this  wonderful  Frijoles 
Canon  accessible  to  the  public,  or  if  the  Archaeological 
School  can  raise  the  means  and  cooperate  with  the 
Forestry  Service  trail  makers,  a  broad  graded  wagon 
road  should  be  cut  down  the  face  of  this  canon,  graded 
gradually  enough  for  a  motor.  The  day  that  is  done, 
visitors  will  number  not  150  a  year  but  150,000;  for 
nothing  more  exquisitely  beautiful  and  wonderful 
exists  in  America. 

It  seems  almost  incredible  that  Judge  and  Mrs. 
Abbott  have  brought  down  this  narrow,  steep  tier  of 
600  steps  all  the  building  material,  all  the  furniture, 
and  all  the  farm  implements  for  their  charming  ranch 
place ;  but  there  the  materials  are  and  there  is  no  other 
trail  in  but  one  still  less  accessible. 

That  afternoon,  Mrs.  Abbott  and  I  wandered  up 
the  valley  two  or  three  miles  and  visited  the  high 
arched  ceremonial  cave  hundreds  of  feet  up  the  face 
of  the  precipice.  The  cave  was  first  discovered  by 
Judge  and  Mrs.  Abbott  on  one  of  their  Sunday  after- 
noon walks.  The  Archaeological  School  under  Dr. 
Hewitt  cleared  out  the  debris  and  accumulated  erosion 
of  centuries  and  put  the  ceremonial  chamber  in  its 
original  condition.  "  Restoring  the  ruins  "  does  not 
mean  "  manufacturing  ruins.  "  It  means  digging  out 
the  erosion  that  has  washed  and  washed  for  thousands 
of  years  down  the  hillsides  during  the  annual  rains. 
All  the  caves  have  been  originally  plastered  in  a  sort 


THE  CITY  OF  THE  DEAD  73 

of  terra  cotta  or  ocher  stucco.  When  that  is  reached 
and  the  charred  wooden  beams  of  the  smoked,  arched 
ceilings,  restoration  stops.  The  aim  is  to  put  the 
caves  as  they  were  when  the  people  abandoned  them. 
On  the  floors  is  a  sort  of  rock  bottom  of  plaster  or 
rude  cement.  When  this  is  reached,  digging  stops. 
It  is  in  the  process  of  digging  down  to  these  floors  that 
the  beautiful  specimens  of  prehistoric  pottery  have 
been  rescued.  Some  of  these  specimens  may  be  seen 
in  Harvard  and  Yale  and  the  Smithsonian  and  the 
Natural  History  Museum  in  New  York,  and  in  the 
Santa  Fe  Palace,  and  the  Field  Museum  of  Chicago. 
Sometimes  as  many  as  four  feet  of  erosion  have  over- 
laid the  original  flooring.  When  digging  down  to  the 
flooring  of  the  ceremonial  cave,  an  estufa  or  sacred 
secret  underground  council  chamber  was  found;  and 
this,  too,  was  restored.  The  pueblo  of  roofless  cham- 
bers seen  from  the  hilltop  on  the  floor  of  the  valley 
was  dug  from  a  mound  of  debris.  In  fact,  too  great 
praise  cannot  be  given  Dr.  Hewitt  and  his  co-workers 
for  their  labors  of  restoration;  and  the  fact  that  Dr. 
Hewitt  was  a  local  man  has  added  to  the  effectiveness 
of  the  work,  for  he  has  been  in  a  position  to  learn 
from  New  Mexican  Indians  of  any  discoveries  and 
rumors  of  discoveries  in  any  of  the  numerous  caves 
up  the  Rio  Grande.  For  instance,  when  about  half- 
way down  the  trail  that  first  day,  at  the  Frijoles  Canon 
or  Rito  de  los  Frijoles,  as  it  is  called,  I  met  on  an 
abrupt  bend  in  the  trail  a  Pueblo  Indian  from  Santa 
Clara  —  blue  jean  suit,  red  handkerchief  around  neck, 
felt  hat,  huge  silver  earrings  and  teeth  white  as 


74  THE  CITY  OF  THE  DEAD 

pearls  —  Juan  Gonzales,  one  of  the  workers  in  the 
canon,  who  knows  every  foot  of  the  Rio  Grande. 
Standing  against  the  white  pumice  background,  it  was 
for  an  instant  as  if  one  of  the  cave  people  had  stepped 
from  the  past.  Well,  it  was  Wan,  as  we  outsiders 
call  him,  who  one  day  brought  word  to  the  Archaeo- 
logical workers  that  he  had  found  in  the  pumice  dust 
in  one  of  the  caves  the  body  of  a  woman.  The  cave 
was  cleaned  out  or  restored,  and  proved  to  be  a  back 
apartment  or  burial  chamber  behind  other  chambers, 
which  had  been  worn  away  by  the  centuries'  wash. 
The  cerements  of  the  body  proved  to  be  a  woven  cloth 
like  burlap,  and  beaver  skin.  There  you  may  see  the 
body  lying  to-day,  proving  that  these  people  under- 
stood the  art  of  weaving  long  before  the  Flemings 
had  learned  the  craft  from  Oriental  trade. 

You  could  stay  in  the  Rito  Canon  for  a  year  and 
find  a  cave  of  fresh  interest  each  day.  For  instance, 
there  is  the  one  where  the  form  of  a  huge  plumed 
serpent  has  been  etched  like  a  molding  round  under 
the  arched  roof.  The  serpent,  it  was,  that  guarded 
the  pools  and  the  springs;  and  when  one  considers 
where  snakes  are  oftenest  found,  it  is  not  surprising 
that  the  serpent  should  have  been  taken  as  a  totem 
emblem.  Many  of  the  chambers  show  six  or  seven 
holes  in  the  floor  —  places  to  connect  with  the  Great 
Earth  Magician  below.  Little  alcoves  were  carved 
in  the  arched  walls  for  the  urns  of  meal  and  water; 
and  a  sacred  fireplace  was  regarded  with  somewhat 
the  same  veneration  as  ancient  Orientals  preserved 
their  altar  fires.  In  one  cave,  some  old  Spanish  padre 


THE  CITY  OF  THE  DEAD  75 

has  come  and  carved  a  huge  cross,  in  rebuke  to  pagan 
symbols.  Other  large  arched  caves  have  housed  the 
wandering  flocks  of  goats  and  sheep  in  the  days  of  the 
Spanish  regime;  and  there  are  other  caves  where 
horse  thieves  and  outlaws,  who  infested  the  West 
after  the  Civil  War,  hid  secure  from  detection.  In 
fact,  if  these  caves  could  speak  they  "  would  a  tale 
unfold.  " 

The  aim  of  the  Archaeological  Society  is  year  by 
year  to  restore  portions  till  the  whole  Rito  is  restored; 
but  at  the  present  rate  of  financial  aid,  complete  resto- 
ration can  hardly  take  place  inside  a  century.  When 
you  consider  that  the  Rito  is  only  one  of  many  pre- 
historic areas  of  New  Mexico,  of  Utah,  of  Colorado, 
awaiting  restoration,  you  are  constrained  to  wish  that 
some  philanthropist  would  place  a  million  or  two  at 
the  disposal  of  the  Archaeological  Society.  If  this 
were  done,  no  place  on  earth  could  rival  the  Rito ;  for 
the  funds  would  make  possible  not  only  the  restoration 
of  the  thousands  of  mounds  buried  under  tons  of 
debris,  but  it  would  make  the  Canon  accessible  to  the 
general  public  by  easier,  nearer  roads.  The  inaccessi- 
bility of  the  Rito  may  be  in  harmony  with  its  ancient 
character;  but  that  same  inaccessibility  drives  thou- 
sands of  tourists  to  Egypt  instead  of  the  Jemez 
Forests. 

There  are  other  things  to  do  in  the  Canon  besides 
explore  the  City  of  the  Dead.  Wander  down  the 
bed  of  the  stream.  You  are  passing  through  parks 
of  stately  yellow  pine,  and  flowers  which  no  botanist 
has  yet  classified.  There  is  the  globe  cactus  high  up 


76  THE  CITY  OF  THE  DEAD 

on  the  black  basalt  rocks,  blood-red  and  fiery  as  if 
dyed  in  the  very  essence  of  the  sun.  There  is  the 
mountain  pink,  compared  to  which  our  garden  and 
greenhouse  beauties  ar:  pale  as  white  woman  com- 
pared to  a  Hopi.  There  is  the  short-stemmed  Eng- 
lish field  daisy,  white  above,  rosy  red  below,  of  which 
Tennyson  sings  in  "  Maud."  Presently,  you  notice 
the  stream  banks  crushing  together,  the  waters  tum- 
bling, the  pumice  changing  to  granite  and  basalt ;  and 
you  are  looking  over  a  fall  sheer  as  a  plummet,  fine  as 
mist. 

Follow  farther  down!  The  canon  is  no  longer  a 
valley.  It  is  a  corridor  between  rocks  so  close  they 
show  only  a  slit  of  sky  overhead;  and  to  follow  the 
stream  bed,  you  must  wade.  Beware  how  you  do  that 
on  a  warm  day  when  a  thaw  of  snow  on  the  peaks 
might  cause  a  sudden  freshet;  for  if  the  waters  rose 
here,  there  would  be  no  escape !  The  day  we  went 
down  a  thaw  was  not  the  danger.  It  was  cold;  the 
clouds  were  looming  rain,  and  there  was  a  high  wind. 
We  crept  along  the  rock  wall.  Narrower  and  darker 
grew  the  passageway.  The  wind  came  funneling  up 
with  a  mist  of  spray  from  below;  and  the  mossed 
rocks  on  which  we  waded  were  slippery  as  only  wet 
moss  can  be.  We  looked  over !  Down  —  down  — 
down  —  tumbled  the  waters  of  the  Rito,  to  one  black 
basin  in  a  waterfall,  then  over  a  ledge  to  another  in 
spray,  then  down  —  down  —  down  to  the  Rio 
Grande,  many  feet  below.  You  come  back  from  the 
brink  with  a  little  shiver,  but  it  was  a  shiver  of  sheer 


THE  CITY  OF  THE  DEAD  77 

delight.  No  wonder  dear  old  Bandelier,  the  first  of 
the  great  archaeologists  to  study  this  region,  opens  his 
quaint  myth  with  the  simple  words  — "  The  Rito  is  a 
beautiful  place.  " 


CHAPTER  V 

THE   ENCHANTED  MESA  OF  ACOMA 

THEY  call  it  "the  Enchanted  Mesa,"  this 
island  of  ocher'  rock  set  in  a  sea  of  light, 
higher  than  Niagara,  beveled  and  faced 
straight  up  and  down  as  if  smoothed  by  some  giant 
trowel.  One  great  explorer  has  said  that  its  flat  top 
is  covered  by  ruins;  and  another  great  scientist  has 
said  that  it  isn't.  Why  quarrel  whether  or  not  this  is 
the  Enchanted  Mesa?  The  whole  region  is  an  En- 
chanted Mesa,  a  Painted  Desert,  a  Dream  Land 
where  mingle  past  and  present,  romance  and  fact, 
chivalry  and  deviltry,  the  stately  grandeur  of  the  old 
Spanish  don  and  the  smart  business  tricks  of  modern 
Yankeedom. 

Shut  your  mind  to  the  childish  quarrel  whether 
there  is  a  heap  of  old  pottery  shards  on  top  of  that 
mesa,  or  whether  the  man  who  said  there  was  carried 
it  up  with  him ;  whether  the  Hopi  hurled  the  Spaniards 
off  that  particular  cliff,  or  off  another!  Shut  your 
mind  to  the  childish,  present-day  bickering,  and  the 
past  comes  trooping  before  you  in  painted  pageantry 
more  gorgeous  and  stirring  than  fiction  can  create. 
First  march  the  enranked  old  Spanish  dons  encased  in 
armor-plate  from  visor  to  leg  greaves,  in  this  hot  land 
where  the  very  touch  of  metal  is  a  burn.  Back  at 

78 


ENCHANTED  MESA  OF  ACOMA      79 

Santa  Fe,  in  Governor  Prince's  fine  collection,  you  can 
see  one  of  the  old  breastplates  dug  up  from  these 
Hopi  mesas  with  the  bullet  hole  square  above  the 
heart.  Of  course,  your  old  Spanish  dons  are  followed 
by  cavalry  on  the  finest  of  mounts,  and  near  the 
leader  rides  the  priest.  Sword  and  cross  rode  grandly 
in  together;  and  up  to  1700,  sword  and  cross  went 
down  ignominiously  before  the  fierce  onslaught  of  the 
enraged  Hopi.  I  confess  it  does  not  make  much 
difference  to  me  whether  the  Spaniards  were  hurled 
to  death  from  this  mesa  —  called  Enchanted  —  or 
that  other  ahead  there,  with  the  village  on  the  tip-top 
of  the  cliff  like  an  old  castle,  or  eagle's  nest.  The 
point  is  —  pagan  hurled  Christian  down;  and  for  two 
centuries  the  cross  went  down  with  the  sword  before 
savage  onslaught.  Martyr  as  well  as  soldier  blood 
dyed  these  ocher-walled  cliffs  deeper  red  than  their 
crimson  sands. 

Then  out  of  the  romantic  past  comes  another  era. 
The  Navajo  warriors  have  obtained  horses  from  the 
Spaniards;  and  henceforth,  the  Navajo  is  a  winged 
foe  to  the  Hopi  people  across  Arizona  and  New 
Mexico.  You  can  imagine  him  with  his  silver  trap- 
pings and  harnessings  and  belts  and  necklaces  and  tur- 
quoise-set buttons  down  trouser  leg,  scouring  below 
these  mesas  to  raid  the  flocks  and  steal  the  wives  of 
the  Hopi;  and  the  Hopi  wives  take  revenge  by  con- 
quering their  conqueror,  bringing  the  arts  and  crafts 
of  the  Hopi  people  —  silver  work,  weaving,  basketry 
—  into  the  Navajo  tribe.  I  confess  it  does  not  make 
much  difference  to  me  whether  the  raid  took  place  a 


8o      ENCHANTED  MESA  OF  ACOMA 

minute  before  midday,  or  a  second  after  nightfall.  I 
can't  see  the  point  to  this  breaking  of  historical  heads 
over  trifles.  The  point  is  that  after  the  incoming  of 
Spanish  horses  and  Spanish  firearms,  the  Navajos  be- 
came a  terror  to  the  Hopi,  who  took  refuge  on  the 
uppermost  tip-top  of  the  highest  mesas  they  could  find. 
There  you  can  see  their  cities  and  towns  to  this  day. 

And  if  you  let  your  mind  slip  back  to  still  remoter 
eras,  you  are  lost  in  a  maze  of  antiquities  older  than 
the  traditions  of  Egypt.  Draw  a  line  from  the  Man- 
zano  Forests  east  of  Albuquerque  west  through  Isleta 
and  Laguna  and  Acoma  and  Zuni  and  the  three  mesas 
of  Arizona  to  Oraibi  and  Hotoville  for  400  miles  to 
the  far  west,  and  along  that  line  you  will  find  ruins  of 
churches,  temples,  council  halls,  call  them  what  you 
will,  which  antedate  the  coming  of  the  Spaniards  by  so 
many  centuries  that  not  even  a  tradition  of  their 
object  remained  when  the  conquerors  came.  Some  of 
these  ruins  —  in  the  Manzanos  and  in  western  Ari- 
zona —  would  house  a  modern  cathedral  and  seat  an 
audience  of  ten  thousand.  What  were  they:  council 
halls,  temples,  what?  And  what  reduced  the  nation 
that  once  peopled  them  to  a  remnant  of  nine  or  ten 
thousand  Hopi  all  told?  Do  you  not  see  how  the 
past  of  this  whole  Enchanted  Mesa,  this  Painted 
Desert,  this  Dream  Land,  is  more  romantic  than 
fiction  could  create,  or  than  picayune  historic  disputes 
as  to  dates  and  broken  crockery? 

There  are  prehistoric  cliff  dwellings  in  this  region 
of  as  great  marvel  as  up  north  of  Santa  Fe;  north  of 
Ganado  at  Chin  Lee,  for  instance.  But  if  you  wish  to 


, 


A  Hopi  wooing,  which  has  an  added  interest  in  that  among 
the  Hopi  Indians,  women  are  the  rulers  of  the  household 


ENCHANTED  MESA  OF  ACOMA      81 

see  the  modern  descendants  of  these  prehistoric  Cliff 
Dwellers,  you  can  see  them  along  the  line  of  the 
National  Forests  from  the  Manzanos  east  of  Albu- 
querque to  the  Coconino  and  Kaibab  at  Grand  Canon 
in  Arizona.  Let  me  explain  here  also  that  the  Hopi 
are  variously  known  as  Moki,  Zuni,  Pueblos;  but  that 
Hopi,  meaning  peaceful  and  life-giving,  is  their  gen- 
eric name;  and  as  such,  I  shall  refer  to  them,  though 
the  western  part  of  their  reserve  is  known  as  Moki 
Land.  You  can  visit  a  pueblo  at  Isleta,  a  short  run 
by  railroad  from  Albuquerque ;  but  Isleta  has  been  so 
frequently  "  toured  "  by  sightseers,  I  preferred  to  go 
to  the  less  frequented  pueblos  at  Laguna  and  Acoma, 
just  south  of  the  western  Manzano  National  Forests, 
and  on  up  to  the  three  mesas  of  the  Moki  Reserve  in 
Arizona.  Also,  when  you  drive  across  Moki  Land, 
you  can  cross  the  Navajo  Reserve,  and  so  kill  two 
birds  with  one  stone. 

Up  to  the  present,  the  inconvenience  of  reaching 
Acoma  will  effectually  prevent  it  ever  being  "  toured." 
When  you  have  to  take  a  local  train  that  lands  you 
in  an  Indian  town  where  there  is  no  hotel  at  two 
o'clock  in  the  morning,  or  else  take  a  freight,  which 
you  reach  by  driving  a  mile  out  of  town,  fording  an 
irrigation  ditch  and  crawling  under  a  barb  wire  fence 
—  there  is  no  immediate  danger  of  the  objective  point 
being  rushed  by  tourist  traffic.  This  is  a  mistake  both 
for  the  tourist  and  for  the  traffic.  If  anything  as 
unique  and  wonderful  as  Acoma  existed  in  Egypt  or 
Japan,  it  would  be  featured  and  visited  by  thousands 
of  Americans  yearly.  As  it  is,  I  venture  to  say,  not  a 


82      ENCHANTED  MESA  OF  ACOMA 

hundred  travelers  see  Acoma's  Enchanted  Mesa  in  a 
year,  and  half  the  number  going  out  fail  to  see  it 
properly  owing  to  inexperience  in  Western  ways  of 
meeting  and  managing  Indians.  For  instance,  the 
day  before  I  went  out,  a  traveler  all  the  way  from 
Germany  had  dropped  off  the  transcontinental  and 
taken  a  local  freight  for  the  Hopi  towns.  When  a 
tourist  wants  to  see  things  in  Germany,  he  finds  a  hun- 
dred willing  palms  out  to  collect  and  point  the  way; 
but  when  a  tourist  leaves  the  beaten  trail  in  America, 
if  he  asks  too  many  questions,  he  is  promptly  told  to 
"  go  to  —  "  I'll  not  say  where.  That  German  wasn't 
in  a  good  mood  when  he  dropped  off  the  freight  train 
at  Laguna.  Good  rooms  you  can  always  get  at  the 
Marmons,  but  there  is  no  regular  meal  place  except 
the  section  house.  If  you  are  a  good  Westerner,  you 
will  carry  your  own  luncheon,  or  take  cheerful  pot  luck 
as  it  comes;  but  the  German  wasn't  a  good  West- 
erner ;  and  it  didn't  improve  his  temper  to  have  butter 
served  up  mixed  with  flies  to  the  tune  of  the  land- 
lady's complaint  that  "  it  didn't  pay  nohow  to  take 
tourists  "  and  she  "  didn't  see  what  she  did  it  for 
anyway." 

They  tell  you  outside  that  it  is  a  hard  drive,  all  the 
way  from  twenty-five  to  thirty  miles  to  Acoma. 
Don't  you  believe  it  I  For  once,  Western  miles  are 
too  short.  The  drive  is  barely  eighteen  miles  and  as 
easy  as  on  a  paved  city  street ;  but  the  German  had  left 
most  of  his  temper  at  Laguna.  When  he  reached 
the  foot  of  the  steep  acclivity  leading  up  to  the  town 
of  Acoma  on  the  very  cloud-crest  of  a  rampart  rock 


ENCHANTED  MESA  OF  ACOMA      83 

and  found  no  guide,  he  started  up  without  one  and,  of 
course,  missed  the  way.  How  he  ever  reached  the 
top  without  breaking  his  neck  is  a  wonder.  The 
Indians  showed  me  the  way  he  had  come  and  said 
they  could  not  have  done  it  themselves.  Anyway, 
what  temper  he  had  not  left  at  Laguna  he  scattered 
sulphurously  on  the  rocks  before  he  reached  the  crest 
of  Acoma ;  and  when  he  had  climbed  the  perilous  way, 
he  was  too  fatigued  to  go  on  through  the  town.  The 
whole  episode  is  typically  characteristic  of  our  stupid 
short-sightedness  as  a  continent  to  our  own  advantage. 
A  $20  miner's  tent  at  Laguna  for  meals,  another  at 
Acoma,  a  good  woman  in  charge  at  the  Laguna  end 
to  put  up  the  lunches,  a  $10  a  month  Indian  boy  to 
show  tourists  the  way  up  the  cliff  —  and  thousands  of 
travelers  would  go  in  and  come  out  with  satisfaction. 
Yet  here  is  Acoma,  literally  the  Enchanted,  unlike 
anything  else  in  the  whole  wide  world;  and  it  is  shut 
off  from  the  sightseer  because  enterprise  is  lacking  to 
put  in  $100  worth  of  equipment  and  set  the  thing 
going.  Is  it  any  wonder  people  say  that  Europeans 
live  on  the  opportunities  Americans  throw  away?  If 
Acoma  were  in  Germany,  they  would  be  diverting  the 
Rhine  round  that  way  so  you  could  see  it  by  moonlight. 

Being  a  Westerner,  it  didn't  inconvenience  me  very 
seriously  to  rise  at  four,  and  take  a  cab  at  five,  and 
drive  out  from  Albuquerque  a  mile  to  the  freight 
yards,  where  it  was  necessary  to  wet  one's  feet  in  an 
acequla  ditch  and  crawl  under  a  barb  wire  fence  to 
reach  the  caboose.  The  desert  sunrise  atoned  for 


84      ENCHANTED  MESA  OF  ACOMA 

all  —  air  pure  wine,  the  red-winged  blackbirds,  thou- 
sands of  them,  whistling  sheer  joy  of  life  along  the 
overflow  swamps  of  the  irrigation  canals.  The  train 
passes  close  enough  to  the  pueblo  of  Isleta  for  you  to 
toss  a  stone  into  the  back  yards  of  the  little  adobe 
dwellings ;  but  Isleta  at  best  is  now  a  white-man  edition 
of  Hopi  type.  Few  of  the  houses  run  up  tier  on  tier 
as  in  the  true  pueblo;  and  the  gorgeous  skirts  and 
shirts  seen  on  the  figures  moving  round  the  doors  are 
nothing  more  nor  less  than  store  calico  in  diamond 
dyes.  In  the  true  Hopi  pueblo,  these  garments  would 
be  sun-dyed  brown  skin  on  the  younger  children,  and 
home-woven,  vegetable-dyed  fabric  on  the  grown-ups. 
The  true  Hopi  skirt  is  nothing  more  nor  less  than  an 
oblong  of  home-woven  cloth,  preferably  white,  or 
vegetable  blue,  brought  round  to  overlap  in  front 
under  a  belt,  with,  perhaps,  shoulder  straps  like  a 
man's  braces.  A  shawl  over  nature's  undergarments 
completes  the  native  costume;  and  the  little  monkey- 
shaped  bare  feet  cramped  from  long  scrambling  over 
the  rocks  get  better  grip  on  steep  stone  stairs  than 
civilized  boots,  though  many  of  the  pueblo  women  are 
now  affecting  the  latter. 

The  freight  train  climbs  and  climbs  into  the  gypsum 
country  of  terrible  drought,  where  nothing  grows 
except  under  the  ditch,  and  the  cattle  lie  dead  of  thirst, 
and  the  wind  blows  a  hurricane  of  dust  that  almost 
knocks  you  off  your  feet. 

The  railroad  passes  almost  through  the  lower 
streets  of  Laguna ;  so  that  when  you  look  up,  you  see 
tier  upon  tier  of  streets  and  three-story  houses  up  and 


ENCHANTED  MESA  OF  ACOMA      85 

up  to  the  Spanish  Church  that  crowns  the  hill.  You 
get  off  at  Laguna,  but  do  not  waste  much  time  there; 
for  the  glories  of  Laguna  are  past.  Long  ago  —  in 
the  fifties  or  thereabouts  —  the  dam  to  the  lagoon 
which  gives  the  community  its  name  broke,  letting  go 
a  waste  of  flood  waters;  and  since  that  time,  the  men 
of  Laguna  have  had  to  go  away  for  work,  the  women 
only  remaining  constantly  at  the  village  engaged 
herding  their  flocks  and  making  pottery.  Perhaps  it 
should  be  stated  here  in  utter  contradiction  to  the  Her- 
bert Spencer  school  of  sociology  that  among  the  Hopi 
the  women  not  only  rule  but  own  the  house  and  all  that 
therein  is.  The  man  may  claim  the  corn  patch  out- 
side the  town  limits,  where  you  see  rags  stuck  on  sticks 
marking  each  owner's  bounds;  or  if  he  attends  the 
flocks  he  may  own  them ;  but  the  woman  is  as  supreme 
a  ruler  in  the  house  as  in  the  Navajo  tribe,  where  the 
supreme  deity  Is  female.  If  the  man  loses  affection 
for  his  spouse,  he  may  gather  up  his  saddle  and  bridle, 
and  leave. 

"  I  marry,  yes,"  said  Marie  Iteye,  my  Acoma 
guide,  to  me,  "  and  I  have  one  girl  —  her,"  pointing 
to  a  pretty  child,  "  but  my  man,  I  guess  he  —  a  bad 
boy  —  he  leave  me." 

If  the  wife  tires  of  her  lord,  all  she  has  to  do  is 
hang  the  saddle  and  bridle  outside.  My  gentleman 
takes  the  hint  and  must  be  off. 

I  set  this  fact  down  because  a  whole  school  of 
modern  sex  sociologists,  taking  their  cue  from  Herbert 
Spencer,  who  never  in  his  life  knew  an  Indian  first 
hand,  write  nonsensical  deductions  about  the  evolution 


86      ENCHANTED  MESA  OF  ACOMA 

of  woman  from  slave  status.  Her  position  has  been 
one  of  absolute  equality  among  the  Hop!  from  the 
earliest  traditions  of  the  race. 

At  Laguna,  you  can  obtain  rooms  with  Mr.  Mar- 
mon,  or  Mr.  Pratt ;  but  you  must  bring  your  luncheon 
with  you ;  or,  as  I  said  before,  take  chance  luck  outside 
at  the  section  house.  A  word  as  to  Mr.  Marmon 
and  Mr.  Pratt,  two  of  the  best  known  white  men  in 
the  Indian  communities  of  the  Southwest.  Where 
white  men  have  foregathered  with  Indians,  it  has  usu- 
ally been  for  the  higher  race  to  come  down  to  the  level 
of  the  lower  people.  Not  so  with  Marmon  and  Pratt ! 
If  you  ask  how  it  is  that  the  pueblos  of  Laguna  and 
Acoma  are  so  superior  to  all  other  Hopi  communities 
of  the  Southwest,  the  answer  invariably  is  "  the  influ- 
ence of  the  two  Marmons  and  Pratt.  "  Coming 
West  as  surveyors  in  the  early  seventies  the  two  Mar- 
mons and  Pratt  opened  a  trading  store,  married 
Indian  women  and  set  themselves  to  civilize  the  whole 
pueblo.  After  almost  four  years'  pow-wow  and 
argument  and  coaxing,  they  in  1879  succeeded  in 
getting  three  children,  two  boys  and  a  girl,  to  go  to 
school  in  the  East  at  Carlisle.  To-day,  those  three 
children  are  leading  citizens  of  the  Southwest.  Later 
on,  the  trouble  was  not  to  induce  children  to  go,  but  to 
handle  the  hundreds  eager  to  be  sent.  To-day,  there 
is  a  government  school  here,  and  the  two  pueblos  of 
Laguna  and  Acoma  are  among  the  cleanest  and  most 
advanced  of  the  Southwest.  Fifteen  hundred  souls 
there  are,  living  in  the  hillside  tiered-town,  where  you 
may  see  the  transition  from  Indian  to  white  in  the  sub- 


ENCHANTED  MESA  OF  ACOMA      87 

stitution  of  downstairs  doors  for  the  ladders  that  for- 
merly led  to  entrance  through  the  roof.  Out  at 
Acoma,  with  its  700  sky  dwellers  perched  sheer  hun- 
dreds of  feet  straight  as  arrow-flight  above  the  plain, 
you  can  count  the  number  of  doors  on  one  hand. 
Acoma  is  still  pure  Hopi.  Only  one  inhabitant  — 
Marie  Iteye  —  speaks  a  word  of  English ;  but  it  is 
Hopi  under  the  far-reaching  and  civilizing  influence 
of  "  Marmon  and  Pratt.'5  The  streets —  ist,  2nd 
and  3rd,  they  call  them  —  of  the  cloud-cliff  town  are 
swept  clean  as  a  white  housewife's  floor.  Inside,  the 
three  story  houses  are  all  whitewashed.  To  be  sure,  a 
hen  and  her  flock  occupy  the  roof  of  the  first  story. 
Perhaps  a  burro  may  stand  sleepily  on  the  next  roof; 
but  then,  the  living  quarters  are  in  the  third  story,  with 
a  window  like  the  porthole  of  a  ship  looking  out  over 
the  precipice  across  the  rolling,  purpling,  shimmering 
mesas  for  hundreds  and  hundreds  of  miles,  till  the  sky- 
line loses  itself  in  heat  haze  and  snow  peaks.  The 
inside  of  these  third  story  rooms  is  spotlessly  clean,  big 
ewers  of  washing  water  on  the  floor,  fireplaces  in  the 
corners  with  sticks  burning  upright,  doorways  opening 
to  upper  sleeping  rooms  and  meal  bins  and  corn  caves. 
Fancy  being  spotlessly  clean  where  water  must  be  car- 
ried on  the  women's  heads  and  backs  any  distance  up 
from  500  to  1,500  feet.  Yet  I  found  some  of  the 
missionaries  and  government  teachers  and  nuns  among 
the  Indians  curiously  discouraged  about  results. 

"  It  takes  almost  three  generations  to  have  any  per- 
manent results,  "  one  teacher  bewailed.  '  We  doubt 
if  it  ever  does  much  good." 


88      ENCHANTED  MESA  OF  ACOMA 

"Doubt  if  it  ever  does  much  good?"  I  should 
like  to  take  that  teacher  and  every  other  discouraged 
worker  among  the  Indians  first  to  Acoma  and  then, 
say,  to  the  Second  Mesa  of  the  Moki  Reserve.  In 
Acoma,  I  would  not  be  afraid  to  rent  a  third  story 
room  and  spread  my  blanket,  and  camp  and  sleep  and 
eat  for  a  week.  At  the  Second  Mesa,  where  mission 
work  has  barely  begun  —  well,  though  the  crest  of  the 
peak  is  swept  by  the  four  winds  of  heaven  and  disin- 
fected by  a  blazing,  cloudless  sun,  I  could  barely  stay 
out  two  hours;  and  the  next  time  I  go,  I'll  take  a  large 
pocket  handkerchief  heavily  charged  with  a  deodor- 
izer. At  Acoma,  you  feel  you  are  among  human 
beings  like  yourself;  of  different  lineage  and  traditions 
and  belief,  but  human.  At  the  Second  Mesa,  you  fall 
to  raking  your  memory  of  Whitechapel  and  the 
Bowery  for  types  as  sodden  and  putrid  and  de- 
generate. 

Mr.  Marmon  furnishes  team  and  Indian  driver  to 
take  you  out  to  Acoma ;  and  please  remember,  the  dis- 
tance is  not  twenty-five  or  fifty  miles  as  you  have  been 
told,  but  an  easy  eighteen  with  a  good  enough  road 
for  a  motor  if  you  have  one. 

Set  out  early  in  the  day,  and  you  escape  the  heat 
Sun  up ;  the  yellow-throated  meadowlarks  lilting  and 
tossing  their  liquid  gold  notes  straight  to  heaven;  the 
desert  flowers  such  a  mass  of  gorgeous,  voluptuous 
bloom  as  dazzle  the  eye  —  cactus,  blood-red  and  gold 
and  carmine,  wild  pink,  scarlet  poppy,  desert  gera- 
nium, little  shy,  dwarf,  miniature  English  daisies  over 


ENCHANTED  MESA  OF  ACOMA      89 

which  Tennyson's  "  Maud  "  trod  —  gorgeous  desert 
flowers  voluptuous  as  oriental  women  —  who  said  our 
Southwest  was  an  arid  waste?  It  is  our  Sahara,  our 
Morocco,  our  Algeria ;  and  we  have  not  yet  had  sense 
enough  to  discover  it  in  its  beauty. 

Red-shawled  women  pattered  down  the  trail  from 
the  hillside  pueblo  of  Laguna,  or  marched  back  up 
from  the  yellow  pools  of  the  San  Jose  River,  jars  of 
water  on  their  heads;  figures  in  bronze,  they  might 
have  been,  or  women  of  the  Ganges.  Then,  the 
morning  light  strikes  the  steeples  of  the  twin-towered 
Spanish  mission  on  the  crest  of  the  hill;  and  the  dull 
steeples  of  the  adobe  church  glow  pure  mercury. 
And  the  light  broods  over  the  stagnant  pools  of  the 
yellow  San  Jose;  and  the  turgid,  muddy  river  flows 
pure  gold.  And  the  light  bathes  the  sandy,  parched 
mesas  and  the  purple  mountains  girding  the  plains 
around  in  yellow  walls  flat  topped  as  if  leveled  by  a 
trowel,  with  here  and  there  in  the  distant  sky-line  the 
opal  gleam  as  of  a  snow  peak  immeasurably  far  away. 
It  dawns  on  you  suddenly  —  this  is  a  realm  of  pure 
light.  How  J.  W.  M.  Turner  would  have  gone  wild 
with  joy  over  it  —  light,  pure  light,  split  by  the  shim- 
mering prism  of  the  dusty  air  into  rainbow  colors, 
transforming  the  sand-charged  atmosphere  into  an 
unearthly  morning  gleam  shot  with  gold  dust.  You 
know  now  that  the  big  globe  cactus  shines  with  the 
glow  of  a  Burma  ruby  here  when  it  is  dull  in  the  East- 
ern conservatory,  because  here  is  of  the  very  essence 
of  the  sun.  The  wild  poppies  shine  on  the  desert 
sands  like  stars  because,  like  the  stars,  they  draw 


90      ENCHANTED  MESA  OF  ACOMA 

their  life  from  the  sun.  And  the  blue  forget-me-nots 
are  like  bits  of  heaven,  because  their  faces  shine  with 
the  light  of  an  unclouded  sky  from  dawn  to  dark. 

You  see  the  countless  herds  of  sheep  and  goats  and 
cattle  and  horses  belonging  to  the  Indian  pueblos, 
herded,  perhaps,  by  a  little  girl  on  horseback,  or  a 
couple  of  boys  lying  among  the  sage  brush;  but  the 
figures  come  to  your  eye  unreal  and  out  of  all  per- 
spective, the  horses  and  cattle,  exaggerated  by  heat 
mirage,  long  and  leggy  like  camels  in  Egypt,  the  boys 
and  girls  lifted  by  the  refraction  of  light  clear  off 
earth  altogether,  unreal  ghost  figures,  the  bleating 
lambs  and  kids  enveloped  in  a  purple,  hazy  heat 
veil  —  an  unreal  Dream  World,  an  Enchanted  Mesa 
all  of  it,  a  Painted  Desert  made  of  lavender  mist  and 
lilac  light  and  heat  haze  shimmering  and  unreal  as  a 
poet's  vision. 

It  adds  to  the  glamour  of  the  unreal  as  the  sun 
mounts  higher,  and  the  planed  rampart  mountain 
walls  encircling  the  mesa  begin  to  shimmer  and  shift 
and  lift  from  earth  in  mirage  altogether. 

You  hear  the  bleat-bleat  of  the  lambs,  and  come 
full  in  the  midst  of  herds  of  thousands  going  down  to 
a  water  pool.  These  Indians  are  not  poor;  not  poor 
by  any  means.  Their  pottery  and  baskets  bring  them 
ready  money.  Their  sheep  give  them  meat  and  wool ; 
and  the  little  corn  patches  suffice  for  meal. 

Then  the  blank  wall  of  the  purple  mountains  opens; 
and  you  pass  into  a  large  saucer-shaped  valley  engirt 
as  before  by  the  troweled  yellow  tufa  walls;  a  lake  of 
light,  where  the  flocks  lift  in  mirage,  lanky  and  unreal. 


ENCHANTED  MESA  OF  ACOMA      91 

Almost  the  spell  and  lure  of  a  Sahara  are  upon  you, 
when  you  lift  your  eyes,  and  there  —  straight  ahead 
—  lies  an  enchanted  island  in  this  lake  of  light,  shim- 
mering and  lifting  in  mirage;  sides  vertical  yellow 
walls  without  so  much  as  a  handhold  visible.  High 
as  three  Niagaras,  twice  as  high  it  might  be,  you  so 
completely  lose  sense  of  perspective;  with  top  flat  as  a 
billiard  table,  detached  from  rock  or  sand  or  foothill, 
isolated  as  a  slab  of  towering  granite  in  a  purple  sea. 
It  is  the  Enchanted  Mesa. 

Hill  Ki,  my  Indian  driver,  grunts  and  points  at  it 
with  his  whip.  *  The  Enchanted  Mesa,  "  he  says. 

I  stop  to  photograph  it;  but  who  can  photograph 
pure  light?  Only  one  man  has  ever  existed  who 
could  paint  pure  light;  and  Turner  is  dead.  Did  a 
race  once  live  on  this  high,  flat,  isolated,  inaccessible 
slab  of  huge  rock?  Lummis  says  "  yes;  "  Hodge  says 
"  no.  "  Are  there  pottery  remnants  of  a  dead  city? 
Lummis  says  "  yes;  "  Hodge  says  "  no.  "  Both  men 
climbed  the  rock,  though  Hill  Ki  tells  me  confiden- 
tially they  "  were  very  scare,"  when  it  came  to  throw- 
ing a  rope  up  over  the  end  of  the  rock,  to  pull  the 
climber  up  as  if  by  pulley.  Marmon  and  Pratt  have 
both  been  up;  and  Hill  Ki  tells  me  so  have  two 
venturesome  white  women  climbers,  whose  names  he 
does  not  know,  but  "  they  weren't  scare.  "  As  we 
pass  from  the  end  to  the  side  of  the  Enchanted  Mesa, 
it  is  seen  to  be  an  oblong  slab  utterly  cut  off  from  all 
contact  but  so  indented  halfway  up  at  one  end  as  to  be 
ascended  by  a  good  climber  to  within  distance  of 
throwing  a  rope  over  the  top.  The  quarrel  between 


92      ENCHANTED  MESA  OF  ACOMA 

Lummis  and  Hodge  his  waxed  hotter  and  hotter  as  to 
the  Enchanted  Mesa  without  any  finale  to  the  dispute; 
and  far  be  it  from  an  outsider  like  myself  to  umpire 
warfare  amid  the  gods  of  the  antiquarian ;  but  isn't  it 
possible  that  a  custom  among  the  Acoma  Indians  may 
explain  the  whole  matter ;  and  that  both  men  may  be 
partly  right?  Miss  McLain,  who  was  in  the  Indian 
Service  at  Laguna,  reports  that  once  an  Indian  family 
told  her  of  this  Acoma  ceremony.  Before  a  youth 
reaches  manhood,  while  he  is  still  being  instructed  in 
the  mysteries  of  Hopi  faith  in  the  underground  council 
room  or  klva,  it  is  customary  for  the  Acomas  to  blind- 
fold him  and  send  him  to  the  top  of  the  Enchanted 
Mesa  for  a  night's  lonely  vigil  with  a  jar  of  water  as 
oblation  to  the  spirits.  These  jars  explain  the  pres- 
ence of  pottery,  which  Lummis  describes.  They 
would  also  give  credence  to  at  least  periodic  inhabiting 
of  the  Mesa.  The  absence  of  house  ruins,  on  the 
other  hand,  would  explain  why  Hodge  scouted  Lum- 
mis1 theory.  The  Indians  explained  to  Miss  McLain 
that  a  boy  could  climb  blindfolded  where  he  could  not 
go  open-eyed,  a  fact  that  all  mountain  engineers  will 
substantiate. 

But  what  matters  the  quarrel?  Is  not  the  whole 
region  an  Enchanted  Mesa,  one  of  the  weirdest  bits 
of  the  New  World?  You  have  barely  rounded  the 
Enchanted  Mesa,  when  another  oblong  colossus  looms 
to  the  fore,  sheer  precipice,  but  accessible  by  tiers  of 
sand  and  stone  at  the  far  end;  that  is,  accessible  by 
handhold  and  foothold.  Look  again!  Along  the 
top  of  the  walled  precipice,  a  crest  to  the  towering 


A  shy  little  Indian  maid  in  a  Hopi  village  of  Arizona 


ENCHANTED  MESA  OF  ACOMA      93 

slab,  is  a  human  wall,  the  walls  of  an  adobe  streetful 
of  houses,  little  windows  looking  out  flush  with  the 
precipice  line  like  the  portholes  of  a  ship.  Then  you 
see  something  red  flutter  and  move  at  the  very  edge  of 
the  rock  top  —  Hopi  urchins,  who  have  spied  us  like 
young  eagles  in  their  eyrie,  and  shout  and  wave  down 
at  us,  though  we  can  barely  hear  their  voices.  It 
looks  for  all  the  world  like  the  top  story  of  a  castle 
above  a  moat. 

At  the  foot  of  the  sand-hill,  I  ask  Hill  Ki,  why,  now 
that  there  is  no  danger  from  Spaniard  and  Navajo, 
the  Hopi  continue  to  live  so  high  up  where  they  must 
carry  all  their  supplies  sheer,  vertical  hundreds  of  feet, 
at  least  1,500  if  you  count  all  the  wiggling  in  and  out 
and  around  the  stone  steps  and  stone  ladders,  and 
niched  handholds.  Hill  Ki  grins  as  he  unhitches  his 
horses,  and  answers:  "  You  understan'  when  you  go 
up  an*  see !  "  But  he  does  not  offer  to  escort  me 
up. 

As  I  am  looking  round  for  the  beginning  of  a 
visible  trail  up,  a  little  Hopi  girl  comes  out  from  the 
sheep  kraal  at  the  foot  of  the  Acoma  Mesa.  Though 
she  cannot  speak  one  word  of  English  and  I  cannot 
speak  one  word  of  Hopi  we  keep  up  a  most  voluble 
conversation  by  gesture.  Don't  ask  how  we  did  it! 
It  is  wonderful  what  you  can  do  when  you  have  to. 
She  is  dressed  in  white,  home-woven  skirt  with  a  white 
rag  for  a  head  shawl  —  badge  of  the  good  girl ;  and 
her  stockings  come  only  to  the  ankles,  leaving  the  feet 
bare.  The  feet  of  all  the  Hopi  are  abnormally  small, 
almost  monkey-shaped;  and  when  you  think  of  it,  it  is 


94      ENCHANTED  MESA  OF  ACOMA 

purely  cause  and  effect.  The  foot  is  not  flat  and 
broad,  because  it  is  constantly  clutching  foothold  up 
and  down  these  rocks.  I  saw  all  the  Hopi  women 
look  at  my  broad-sole  I,  box-toed  outing  boots  in 
amazement.  At  hard  spots  in  the  climb,  they  would 
turn  and  point  to  my  boots  and  offer  me  help  till  I 
showed  them  that  the  sole,  though  thick,  was  pliable 
as  a  moccasin. 

The  little  girl  signaled;  did  I  want  to  go  up? 

I  nodded. 

She  signaled;  would  I  go  up  the  hard,  steep,  quick 
way;  or  the  long,  easy  path  by  the  sand?  As  the 
stone  steps  seemed  to  give  handhold  well  as  foothold, 
and  the  sand  promised  to  roll  you  back  fast  as  you 
climbed  up,  I  signaled  the  hard  way;  and  off  we  set. 
I  asked  her  how  old  she  was;  and  she  seemed  puzzled 
how  to  answer  by  signs  till  she  thought  of  her 
fingers  —  then  up  went  eight  with  a  tap  to  her  chest 
signifying  self.  I  asked  her  what  had  caused  such 
sore  inflammation  in  her  eyes.  She  thought  a  minute ; 
then  pointed  to  the  sand,  and  winnowed  one  hand  as 
of  wind  —  the  sand  storm;  and  so  we  kept  an  active 
conversation  up  for  three  hours  without  a  word  being 
spoken ;  but  by  this,  a  little  hand  sought  mine  in  vari- 
ous affectionate  squeezes,  and  a  pair  of  very  sore  eyes 
looked  up  with  confidence,  and  what  was  lacking  in 
words,  she  made  up  in  shy  smiles.  Poor  little  Hopi 
kiddie !  Will  your  man  "  be  bad  boy,"  too,  by  and 
by?  Will  you  acquire  the  best,  or  the  worst,  of  the 
white  civilization  that  is  encroaching  on  your  tena- 
cious, conservative  race?  After  all,  you  are  better 


ENCHANTED  MESA  OF  ACOMA      95 

off,  little  kiddie,  a  thousand  fold,  than  if  you  were  a 
street  gamin  in  th,e  vicious  gutters  of  New  York. 

By  this,  what  with  wind,  and  sand,  and  the  weight 
of  a  kodak  and  a  purse,  and  the  hard  ascent,  one  of 
the  two  climbers  has  to  pause  for  breath ;  and  what  do 
you  think  that  eight-year-old  bit  of  small  humanity 
does?  Turns  to  give  me  a  helping  hand.  That  is 
too  much  for  gravity.  I  laugh  and  she  laughs  and 
after  that,  I  think  she  would  have  given  me  both 
hands  and  both  feet  and  her  soul  to  boot.  She  offers 
to  carry  my  kodak  and  films  and  purse ;  and  for  three 
hours,  I  let  her.  Can  you  imagine  yourself  letting  a 
New  York,  or  Paris,  or  London  street  gamin  carry 
your  purse  for  three  hours?  Yet  the  Laguna  people 
had  told  me  to  look  out  for  myself.  I'd  find  the 
Acomas  uncommonly  sharp. 

That  climb  is  as  easy  to  the  Acomas  as  your  home 
stairs  to  you;  but  it's  a  good  deal  more  arduous  to 
the  outsider  than  a  climb  up  the  whole  length  of  the 
Washington  Monument,  or  up  the  Metropolitan 
Tower  in  New  York;  but  it  is  all  easily  possible. 
Where  the  sand  merges  to  stone,  are  handhold  niches 
as  well  as  stone  steps;  and  where  the  rock  steps  are 
too  steep,  are  wooden  ladders.  At  last,  we  swing 
under  a  great  overhanging  stone  —  splendid  weapon 
if  the  Navajos  had  come  this*  way  in  old  days,  and 
splendid  place  for  slaughter  of  the  Spanish  soldiers, 
who  scaled  Acoma  two  centuries  ago  —  up  a  tier  of 
stone  steps,  and  we  are  on  top  of  the  white  limestone 
Mesa,  in  the  town  of  Acoma,  with  its  ist,  2nd,  and 
3rd  streets,  and  its  ist,  2nd,  and  3rd  story  houses, 


96      ENCHANTED  MESA  OF  ACOMA 

the  first  roof  reached  by  a  movable  ladder,  the  next 
two  roofs  by  stone  steps. 

I  shall  not  attempt  to  describe  the  view  from  above. 
Take  Washington's  Shaft;  multiply  by  two,  set  it 
down  in  Sahara  Desert,  climb  to  the  top  and  look 
abroad !  That  is  the  view  from  Acoma.  Is  the  trip 
worth  while?  Is  mountain  climbing  worth  while? 
Do  you  suppose  half  a  hundred  people  would  yearly 
break  their  necks  in  Switzerland  if  climbing  were  not 
worth  while?  As  Hill  Ki  said  when  I  asked  him 
why  they  did  not  move  their  city  down  now  that  all 
danger  of  raid  had  passed,  "  You  go  up  an*  see!  " 
Now  I  understood.  The  water  pools  were  but  glints 
of  silver  on  the  yellow  sands.  The  flocks  of  sheep 
and  goats  looked  like  ants.  The  rampart  rocks  that 
engirt  the  valley  were  yellow  rims  below;  and  across 
the  tops  of  the  far  mesas  could  be  seen  scrub  for- 
ests and  snowy  peaks.  Have  generations  —  genera- 
tions on  generations — of  life  amid  such  color  had 
anything  to  do  with  the  handicrafts  of  these  people 
^-pottery,  basketry,  weaving,  becoming  almost  an 
art?  Certainly,  their  work  is  the  most  artistic  handi- 
craft done  by  Indians  in  America  to-day. 

Boys  and  girls,  babies  and  dogs,  rush  to  salute  us 
as  we  come  up ;  but  my  little  guide  only  takes  tighter 
hold  of  my  hand  and  "  shoos  "  them  off.  We  pass 
a  deep  pool  of  waste  water  from  the  houses,  lying 
in  the  rocks,  and  on  across  the  square  to  the  twin- 
towered  church  in  front  of  which  is  a  rudely  fenced 
graveyard.  The  whole  mesa  is  solid,  hard  rock;  and 
to  make  this  graveyard  for  their  people,  the  women 


ENCHANTED  MESA  OF  ACOMA      97 

have  carried  up  on  their  backs  sand  and  soil  enough 
to  fill  in  a  depression  for  a  burying  place.  The  bones 
lie  thick  on  the  surface  soil.  The  graveyard  is  now 
literally  a  bank  of  human  limestone. 

I  have  asked  my  little  guide  to  take  me  to  Marie 
Iteye,  the  only  Acorria  who  speaks  English;  and  I 
meet  her  now  stepping  smartly  across  the  square,  feet 
encased  in  boots  at  least  four  sizes  smaller  than  mine, 
red  skirt  to  knee,  fine  stockings,  red  shawl  and  a  pro- 
fusion of  turquoise  ornaments.  We  shake  hands,  and 
when  I  ask  her  where  she  learned  to  speak  such  good 
English,  she  tells  me  of  her  seven  years*  life  at  Car- 
lisle, It  is  the  one  wish  of  her  heart  that  she  may 
some  day  go  back:  another  shattered  delusion  that 
Indians  hate  white  schools. 

She  takes  me  across  to  the  far  edge  of  the  Mesa, 
where  her  sisters,  the  finest  pottery  makers  of  Acoma, 
are  burning  their  fine  gray  jars  above  sheep  manure. 
For  fifty  cents  I  can  buy  here  a  huge  fern  jar  with 
finest  gray-black  decorations,  which  would  cost  me 
$5  to  $10  down  at  the  railroad  or  $15  in  the  East; 
but  there  is  the  question  of  taking  it  out  in  my  camp 
kit;  and  I  content  myself  with  a  little  black-brown 
basin  at  the  same  price,  which  Marie  has  used  in  her 
own  house  as  meal  jar  for  ten  years.  As  a  memento 
to  me,  she  writes  her  name  in  the  bottom. 

Her  house  we  ascended  by  ladder  to  a  first  roof, 
where  clucked  a  hen  and  chickens,  and  lay  a  litter  of 
new  puppies.  From  this  roof  goes  up  a  tier  of  stone 
steps  to  a  second  roof.  Off  this  roof  is  the  door  to 
a  third  story  room ;  and  a  cleaner  room  I  have  never 


98      ENCHANTED  MESA  OF  ACOMA 

seen  in  a  white  woman's  house.  The  fireplace  is  in 
one  corner,  the  broom  in  the  other,  a  window  between 
looking  out  of  the  precipice  wall  over  such  a  view 
as  an  eagle  might  scan.  Baskets  with  corn  and  bowls 
of  food  and  jars  of  drinking  water  stand  in  niches  in 
the  wall.  The  adobe  floor  is  hard  as  cement,  and 
clean.  All  walls  and  the  ceiling  are  whitewashed. 
The  place  is  spotless. 

"  Where  do  you  sleep,  Marie?  "  I  ask. 

"  Downstairs !  You  come  out  and  stay  a  week 
with  me,  mebbee,  sometime." 

And  as  she  speaks,  come  up  the  stone  stairs  from 
the  room  below,  her  father  and  brother,  amazed  to 
know  why  a  woman  should  be  traveling  alone  through 
Hopi  and  Moki  and  Navajo  Land. 

And  all  the  other  houses  visited  are  clean  as 
Marie's.  Is  the  fact  testimony  to  Carlisle,  or  the 
twin-towered  church  over  there,  or  Marmon  and 
Pratt?  I  cannot  answer;  but  this  I  do  know,  that 
Acoma  is  as  different  from  the  other  Hopi  or  Moki 
mesas  as  Fifth  Avenue  is  from  the  Bowery. 

All  the  time  I  was  in  the  houses,  my  little  guide 
had  been  waiting  wistfully  at  the  bottom  of  the 
ladder;  and  the  children  uttered  shouts  of  glee  to  see 
me  come  down  the  ladder  face  out  instead  of  back- 
wards as  the  Acomas  descend. 

We  descended  from  the  Mesa  by  the  sand-hills 
instead  of  the  rock  steps,  preceded  by  an  escort  of 
romping  children;  but  not  a  discourteous  act  took 
place  during  all  my  visit.  Could  I  say  the  same  of 
a  three  hours'  visit  amid  the  gamins  of  New  York, 


ENCHANTED  MESA  OF  ACOMA      99 

or  London  ?  At  the  foot  of  the  cliff,  we  shook  hands 
all  round  and  said  good-by;  and  when  I  looked  back 
up  the  valley,  the  children  were  still  waving  and 
waving.  If  this  be  humble  Indian  life  in  its  Simon 
pure  state,  with  all  freedom  from  our  rules  of  con- 
duct, all  I  have  to  say  is  it  is  infinitely  superior  to  the 
hoodlum  life  of  our  cities  and  towns. 

One  point  more:  I  asked  Marie  as  I  had  asked 
Mr.  Marmon,  "  Do  you  think  your  people  are  Indi- 
ans, or  Aztecs?"  and  the  answer  came  without  a 
moment's  hesitation  —  "Aztecs;  we  are  not  Indian 
like  Navajo  and  Apaches." 

Opposite  the  Enchanted  Mesa,  I  looked  back. 
My  little  guide  was  still  gazing  wistfully  after  us, 
waving  her  shawl  and  holding  tight  to  a  coin  which  I 
trust  no  old  grimalkin  pried  out  of  her  hand. 


CHAPTER  VI 

ACROSS    THE    PAINTED    DESERT    THROUGH    NAVAJO 

LAND 

WHEN  you  leave  the  Enchanted  Mesa  at 
Acoma,  to   follow  the  unbeaten  trail  on 
through  the  National   Forests,  you  may 
take  one  of  three  courses;  or  all  three  courses  if  you 
have  time. 

You  may  strike  up  into  Zuni  Land  from  Gallup. 
Or  you  may  go  down  in  the  White  Mountains  of 
Arizona  from  Holbrook;  and  here  it  should  be  stated 
that  the  White  Mountains  are  one  of  the  great  un- 
hunted  game  resorts  of  the  Southwest.  Some  of  the 
best  trout  brooks  of  the  West  are  to  be  found  under 
the  snows  of  the  Continental  Divide.  Deer  and 
bear  and  mountain  cat  are  as  plentiful  as  before  the 
coming  of  the  white  man  —  and  likely  to  remain  so 
many  a  day,  for  the  region  is  one  of  the  most  rugged 
and  forbidding  in  the  Western  States.  Add  to  the 
clanger  of  sheer  rock  declivity,  an  almost  desert-forest 
growth  —  dwarf  juniper  and  cedar  and  giant  cactus 
interwoven  in  a  snarl,  armed  with  spikes  to  keep  off 
intruders  —  and  you  can  understand  why  some  of 
the  most  magnificent  specimens  of  black-tail  in  the 
world  roam  the  peaks  and  mesas  here  undisturbed 

ZOO 


ACROSS  THE  PAINTED  DESERT     101 

by  the  hunter.  Also,  on  your  way  into  the  White 
Mountains,  you  may  visit  almost  as  wonderful  pre- 
historic dwellings  as  in  the  Frijoles  of  New  Mexico, 
or  the  Mesa  Verde  of  Colorado.  It  is  here  you  find 
Montezuma's  Castle  and  Montezuma's  Well,  the 
former,  a  colossal  community  house  built  on  a  preci- 
pice-face and  reached  only  by  ladders;  the  latter,  a 
huge  prehistoric  reservoir  of  unknown  soundings; 
both  in  almost  as  perfect  repair  as  if  abandoned  yes- 
terday, though  both  antedate  all  records  and  tradi- 
tions so  completely  that  even  when  white  men  came  in 
1540  the  Spaniards  had  no  remotest  gleaning  of  their 
prehistoric  occupants.  Also  on  your  way  into  the 
White  Mountains,  you  may  visit  the  second  largest 
natural  bridge  in  the  world,  a  bridge  so  huge  that 
quarter-section  farms  can  be  cultivated  above  the 
central  span. 

Or  you  may  skip  the  short  trip  out  to  Zufii  off  the 
main  traveled  highway,  and  the  long  trip  south 
through  the  White  Mountains  —  two  weeks  at  the 
very  shortest,  and  you  should  make  it  six  —  and  leave 
Gallup,  just  at  the  State  line  of  Arizona,  drive  north- 
west across  the  Navajo  Reserve  and  Moki  Land  to 
the  Coconino  Forests  and  the  Tusayan  and  the  Kai- 
bab,  round  the  Grand  Canon  up  towards  the  State 
lines  of  California  and  Utah.  If  you  can  afford  time 
only  for  one  of  these  three  trips,  take  the  last  one; 
for  it  leads  you  across  the  Painted  Desert  with  all  its 
wonder  and  mystery  and  lure  of  color  and  light  and 
remoteness,  with  the  tang  of  high,  cool,  lavender 
blooming  mesas  set  like  islands  of  rock  in  shifting  seas 


102    ACROSS  THE  PAINTED  DESERT 

of  gaudy-colored  sand,  with  the  romance  and  the 
adventure  and  the  movement  of  the  most  picturesque 
horsemen  and  herdsmen  in  America.  It  isn't 
America  at  all!  You  know  that  as  soon  as  you  go 
up  over  the  first  high  mesa  from  the  beaten  highway 
and  drop  down  over  into  another  world,  a  world  of 
shifting,  shimmering  distances  and  ocher-walled  ram- 
part rocks  and  sand  ridges  as  red  as  any  setting  sun 
you  ever  saw.  It  isn't  America  at  all !  It's  Arabia; 
and  the  Bedouins  of  our  Painted  Desert  are  these 
Navajo  boys  —  a  red  scarf  binding  back  the  hair, 
the  hair  in  a  hard-knotted  coil  (not  a  braid),  a  red 
plush,  or  brilliant  scarlet,  or  bright  green  shirt,  with 
silver  work  belt,  and  khaki  trousers  or  white  cotton 
pantaloons  slit  to  the  knee,  and  moccasins,  with  more 
silver-work,  and  such  silver  bridles  and  harnessings  as 
would  put  an  Arab's  Damascus  tinsel  to  the  blush. 
Go  up  to  the  top  of  one  of  the  red  sand  knobs  —  you 
see  these  Navajo  riders  everywhere,  coming  out  of 
their  hogan  houses  among  the  juniper  groves,  cross- 
ing the  yellow  plain,  scouring  down  the  dry  arroyo 
beds,  infinitesimal  specks  of  color  moving  at  swift 
pace  across  these  seas  of  sand.  Or  else  you  see 
where  at  night  and  morning  the  water  comes  up 
through  the  arroyo  bed  in  pools  of  silver,  receding 
only  during  the  heat  of  the  day;  and  moving  through 
the  juniper  groves,  out  from  the  ocher  rocks  that 
screen  the  desert  like  the  wings  of  a  theater,  down 
the  panting  sand  bed  of  the  dead  river,  trot  vast 
herds  of  sheep  and  goats,  the  young  bleat  —  bleating 
till  the  air  quivers  —  driven  by  little  Navajo  girls  on 


ACROSS  THE  PAINTED  DESERT     103 

horseback,  born  to  the  saddle,  as  the  Canadian  Cree 
is  born  to  the  canoe. 

If  you  can't  go  to  Zuni  Land  and  the  White  Moun- 
tain Forest  and  the  Painted  Desert,  then  choose  the 
Painted  Desert.  It  will  give  you  all  the  sensations 
of  a  trip  to  the  Orient  without  the  expense  or  dis- 
comfort. Besides,  you  will  learn  that  America  has 
her  own  Egypt  and  her  own  Arabia  and  her  own 
Persia  in  racial  type  and  in  handicraft  and  in  an- 
tiquity; and  that  fact  is  worth  taking  home  with  you. 
Also,  the  end  of  the  trip  will  drop  you  near  your  next 
jumping-off  place  —  in  the  Coconino  and  Tusayan 
Forests  of  the  Grand  Canon.  And  if  the  lure  of  the 
antique  still  draws  you,  if  you  are  still  haunted  by 
that  blatant  and  impudent  lie  (ignorance,  like  the  big 
drum,  always  speaks  loudest  when  it  is  emptiest), 
"  that  America  lacks  the  picturesque  and  historic," 
believe  me  there  are  antiquities  in  the  Painted  Desert 
of  Arizona  that  antedate  the  antiquities  of  Egypt  by 
8,000  years.  '  The  more  we  study  the  prehistoric 
ruins  of  America, "  declared  one  of  the  leading  ethno- 
logical scholars  of  the  world  in  the  School  of  Archae- 
ology at  Rome,  "  the  more  undecided  we  become 
whether  the  civilization  of  the  Orient  preceded  that 
of  America,  or  that  of  America  preceded  the  Orient." 

For  instance,  on  your  way  across  the  Painted 
Desert,  you  can  strike  into  Canon  de  Shay  (spelled 
Chelly) ,  and  in  one  of  the  rock  walls  high  above  the 
stream  you  will  find  a  White  House  carved  in  high 
arches  and  groined  chambers  from  the  solid  stone,  a 
prehistoric  dwelling  where  you  could  hide  and  lose  a 


io4    ACROSS  THE  PAINTED  DESERT 

dozen  of  our  national  White  House.  Who  built  the 
aerial,  hidden  and  secluded  palace?  What  royal 
barbaric  race  dwelt  in  it?  What  drove  them  out? 
Neither  history  nor  geology  have  scintilla  of  answer 
to  those  questions.  Your  guess  is  as  good  as  the 
next;  and  you  haven't  to  go  all  the  way  to  Persia, 
or  the  Red  Sea,  or  Tibet,  to  do  your  guessing,  but 
only  a  day's  drive  from  a  continental  route  —  cost 
for  team  and  driver  $14.  In  fact,  you  can  go  into 
the  Painted  Desert  with  a  well-planned  trip  of  six 
months;  and  at  the  end  of  your  trip  you  will  know,  as 
you  could  not  at  the  beginning,  that  you  have  barely 
entered  the  margin  of  the  wonders  in  this  Navajo 
Land. 

To  strike  into  the  Painted  Desert,  you  can  leave 
the  beaten  highway  at  Gallup,  or  Holbrook,  or  Flag- 
staff, or  the  Grand  Canon;  but  to  cross  it,  you  should 
enter  at  the  extreme  east  and  drive  west,  or  enter 
west  and  drive  east.  Local  liverymen  have  drivers 
who  know  the  way  from  point  to  point;  and  the 
charge,  including  driver,  horses  and  hay,  is  from  $6 
to  $7  a  day.  Better  still,  if  you  are  used  to  horse- 
back, go  in  with  pack  animals,  which  can  be  bought 
outright  at  a  very  nominal  price  —  $25  to  $40  for 
ponies,  $10  to  $20  for  burros;  but  in  any  case,  take 
along  a  white,  or  Indian,  who  knows  the  trails  of  the 
vast  Reserve,  for  water  is  as  rare  as  radium  and  only 
a  local  man  knows  the  location  of  those  pools  where 
you  will  be  spending  your  nooning  and  camp  for  the 
night.  Camp  in  the  Southwest  at  any  other  season 
than  the  two  rainy  months  —  July  and  August  — 


ACROSS  THE  PAINTED  DESERT     105 

does  not  necessitate  a  tent.  You  can  spread  your 
blankets  and  night  will  stretch  a  sky  as  soft  as  the 
velvet  blue  of  a  pansy  for  roof,  and  the  stars  will 
swing  down  so  close  in  the  rare,  clear  Desert  air  that 
you  will  think  you  can  reach  up  a  hand  and  pluck  the 
lights  like  jack-o'-lanterns.  Because  you  are  in  the 
Desert,  don't  delude  yourself  into  thinking  you'll  not 
need  warm  night  covering.  It  may  be  as  hot  at  mid- 
day as  a  blast  out  of  a  furnace,  though  the  heat  is 
never  stifling;  but  the  altitude  of  the  various  mesas 
you  will  cross  varies  from  6,000  to  9,000  feet,  and 
the  night  will  be  as  chilly  as  if  you  were  camped  in 
the  Canadian  Northwest. 

Up  to  the  present,  the  Mission  of  St.  Michael's, 
Day's  Ranch,  and  Mr.  Hubbell's  almost  regal  hospi- 
tality, have  been  open  to  all  comers  crossing  the  Des- 
ert —  open  without  cost  or  price.  In  fact,  if  you  of- 
fered money  for  the  kindness  you  receive,  it  would  be 
regarded  as  an  insult.  It  is  a  type  of  the  old-time 
baronial  Spanish  hospitality,  when  no  door  was 
locked  and  every  comer  was  welcomed  to  the  festive 
board,  and  if  you  expressed  admiration  for  jewel,  or 
silver-work,  or  old  mantilla,  it  was  presented  to  you 
by  the  lord  of  the  manor  with  the  simple  and  abso- 
lutely sincere  words,  "  It  is  yours,"  which  scrubs 
and  bubs  and  dubs  and  scum  and  cockney  were  apt  to 
take  greedily  and  literally,  with  no  sense  of  the 
noblesse  oblige  which  binds  recipient  as  it  binds  donor 
to  a  code  of  honor  not  put  in  words.  It  is  a  type  of 
hospitality  that  has  all  but  vanished  from  this  sordid 
earth;  and  it  is  a  type,  I  am  sorry  to  write,  ill-suited 


106    ACROSS  THE  PAINTED  DESERT 

to  an  age  when  the  Quantity  travel  quite  as  much  as 
the  Quality.  For  instance,  everyone  who  has  crossed 
the  Painted  Desert  knows  that  Lorenzo  Hubbell, 
who  is  commonly  called  the  King  of  Northern  Ari- 
zona, has  yearly  spent  thousands,  tens  of  thousands, 
entertaining  passing  strangers,  whom  he  has  never 
seen  before  and  will  never  see  again,  who  come  un- 
announced and  stay  unurged  and  depart  reluctantly. 
In  the  old  days,  when  your  Spanish  grandee  enter- 
tained only  his  peers,  this  was  well;  but  to-day  — 
well,  it  may  work  out  in  Goldsmith's  comedy, 
where  the  two  travelers  mistake  a  mansion  for  an  inn. 
But  where  the  arrivals  come  in  relays  of  from  one  to 
a  dozen  a  month,  and  issue  orders  as  to  hot  water  and 
breakfast  and  dinner  and  supper  and  depart  tardily 
as  a  dead-beat  from  a  city  lodging  house  and  break 
out  in  complaints  and  sometimes  afterwards  break 
out  in  patronizing  print,  it  is  time  for  the  Mission  and 
Day's  Ranch  and  Mr.  Hubbell's  trading  posts  to 
have  kitchen  quarters  for  such  as  they.  In  the  old 
days,  Quality  sat  above  the  salt;  Quantity  sat  below 
it  and  slept  in  rushes  spread  on  the  floor.  I  would 
respectfully  offer  a  suggestion  as  to  salting  down 
much  of  the  freshness  that  weekly  pesters  the  fine  old 
baronial  hospitality  of  the  Painted  Desert.  For  in- 
stance, there  was  the  Berlin  professor,  who  arrived 
unwanted  and  unannounced  after  midnight,  and 
quietly  informed  his  host  that  he  didn't  care  to  rise 
for  the  family  breakfast  but  would  take  his  at  such 
an  hour.  There  was  the  drummer  who  ordered  the 
daughter  of  the  house  "  to  hustle  the  fodder," 


A     Navajo    boy    who     is     exceptionally     handsome     and 
picturesque 


ACROSS  THE  PAINTED  DESERT     107 

There  was  the  lady  who  stayed  unasked  for  three 
weeks,  then  departed  to  write  ridiculous  caricatures 
of  the  very  roof  that  had  sheltered  her.  There  was 
the  Government  man  who  calmly  ordered  his  host  to 
have  breakfast  ready  at  three  in  the  morning.  His 
host  would  not  ask  his  colored  help  to  rise  at  such  an 
hour  and  with  his  own  hands  prepared  the  breakfast, 
when  the  guest  looked  lazily  through  the  window  and 
seeing  a  storm  brewing  "  thought  he'd  not  mind  going 
after  all." 

"  What?  "  demanded  his  entertainer.  "  You  will 
not  go  after  you  have  roused  me  at  three?  You  will 
go;  and  you  will  go  quick;  and  you  will  go  this 


instant." 


The  Painted  Desert  is  bound  to  become  as  well 
known  to  American  travelers  as  Algiers  and  the 
northern  rim  of  the  Sahara  to  the  thousands  of  Euro- 
pean tourists,  who  yearly  flock  south  of  the  Mediter- 
ranean. When  that  time  comes,  a  different  system 
must  prevail,  so  I  would  advise  all  visitors  going  into 
the  Navajo  country  to  take  their  own  food  and  camp 
kit  and  horses,  either  rented  from  an  outfitter  at  the 
starting  point,  or  bought  outright.  At  St.  Michael's 
Mission,  and  Ganado,  and  the  Three  Mesas,  and 
Oraibi,  you  can  pick  up  the  necessary  local  guide. 

We  entered  the  Painted  Desert  by  way  of  Gallup, 
hiring  driver  and  team  locally.  Motors  are  avail- 
able for  the  first  thirty  miles  of  the  trip,  though  out 
of  the  question  for  the  main  150  miles,  owing  to  the 
heavy  sand,  fine  as  flour ;  but  they  happened  to  be  out 
of  commission  the  day  we  wanted  them. 


io8    ACROSS  THE  PAINTED  DESERT 

The  trail  rises  and  rises  from  the  sandy  levels  of 
the  railroad  town  till  you  are  presently  on  the  high 
northern  mesa  among  scrub  juniper  and  cedar,  in  a 
cool-scented,  ozone  atmosphere,  as  life-giving  as  any 
frost  air  of  the  North.  The  yellow  ocher  rocks  close 
on  each  side  in  walled  ramparts,  and  nestling  in  an 
angle  of  rock  you  see  a  little  fenced  ranch  house, 
where  they  charge  ten  cents  a  glass  for  the  privilege 
of  their  spring.  There  is  the  same  profusion  of  gor- 
geous desert  flowers,  dyed  in  the  very  essence  of  the 
sun,  as  you  saw  round  the  Enchanted  Mesa  —  globe 
cactus  and  yellow  poppies  and  wild  geraniums  and 
little  blue  forget-me-nots  and  a  rattlesnake  flower 
with  a  bloated  bladder  seed  pod  mottled  as  its  proto- 
type's skin.  And  the  trail  still  climbs  till  you  drop 
sheer  over  the  edge  of  the  sky-line  and  see  a  new 
world  swimming  below  you  in  lakes  of  lilac  light  and 
blue  shadows  —  blue  shadows,  sure  sign  of  desert 
land  as  Northern  lights  are  of  hyperborean  realm. 
It  is  the  Painted  Desert;  and  it  isn't  a  flat  sand  plain 
as  you  expected,  but  a  world  of  rolling  green  and 
purple  and  red  hills  receding  from  you  in  the  waves 
of  a  sea  to  the  belted,  misty  mountains  rising  up  sheer 
in  a  sky  wall.  And  it  isn't  a  desolate,  uninhabited 
waste,  as  you  expected.  You  round  a  ridge  of  yellow 
rock,  and  three  Zuni  boys  are  loping  along  the  trail 
in  front  of  you  —  red  headband,  hair  in  a  braid,  red 
sash,  velvet  trousers  —  the  most  famous  runners  of 
all  Indian  tribes  in  spite  of  their  short,  squat  stature. 
The  Navajo  trusts  to  his  pony,  and  so  is  a  slack 
runner.  Also,  he  is  not  so  well  nourished  as  the 


ACROSS  THE  PAINTED  DESERT     109 

Zuni  or  Hopi,  and  so  has  not  as  firm  muscles  and 
strong  lungs.  These  Zuni  lads  will  set  out  from 
Oraibi  at  daybreak,  and  run  down  to  Holbrook, 
eighty  miles  in  a  day.  Or  you  hear  the  tinkle  of  a 
bell,  and  see  some  little  Navajo  girl  on  horseback 
driving  her  herd  of  sheep  down  to  a  drinking  pool. 
It  all  has  a  curiously  Egyptian  or  Oriental  effect.  So 
Rachel  was  watering  her  flocks  when  the  Midianitish 
herders  drove  her  from  the  spring;  and  you  see  the 
same  rivalry  for  possession  of  the  waterhole  in  our 
own  desert  country  as  ancient  record  tells  of  that 
other  storied  land. 

The  hay  stacks,  huge,  tent-shaped  tufa  rocks  to  the 
right  of  the  road,  mark  the  approach  to  St.  Michael's 
Mission.  Where  one  great  rock  has  splintered  from 
the  main  wall  is  a  curious  phenomenon  noted  by  all 
travelers  —  a  cow,  head  and  horns,  etched  in  perfect 
outline  against  the  face  of  the  rock.  The  driver 
tells  you  it  is  a  trick  of  rain  and  stain,  but  a  knowl- 
edge of  the  tricks  of  lightning  stamping  pictures  on 
objects  struck  in  an  atmosphere  heavily  charged  with 
electricity  suggests  another  explanation. 

Then  you  have  crossed  the  bridge  and  the  red- 
tiled  roofs  of  St.  Michael's  loom  above  the  hill,  and 
you  drive  up  to  an  oblong,  white,  green-shuttered 
building  as  silent  as  the  grave  —  St.  Michael's  Mis- 
sion, where  the  Franciscans  for  seventeen  years  have 
been  holding  the  gateway  to  the  Navajo  Reserve. 
Below  the  hill  is  a  little  square  log  shack,  the  mission 
printing  press.  Behind,  another  shack,  the  post- 
office  ;  and  off  beyond  the  hill,  the  ranch  house  of  Mr. 


i  io    ACROSS  THE  PAINTED  DESERT 

and  Mrs.  Day,  two  of  the  best  known  characters  on 
the  Arizona  frontier.  A  mile  down  the  arroyo  is 
the  convent  school,  Miss  Drexel's  Mission  for  the 
Indians;  a  fine,  massive  structure  of  brick  and  stone, 
equal  to  any  of  the  famous  Jesuit  and  Ursuline  schools 
so  famous  in  the  history  of  Quebec. 

And  at  this  little  mission,  with  its  half-dozen  build- 
ings, is  being  lived  over  again  the  same  heroic  drama 
that  Father  Vimont  and  Mother  Mary  of  the  Incar- 
nation opened  in  New  France  three  centuries  ago; 
only  we  are  a  little  too  close  to  this  modern  drama  to 
realize  its  fine  quality  of  joyous  self-abnegation  and 
practical  religion.  Also,  the  work  of  Miss  Drexel's 
missionaries  promises  to  be  more  permanent  than  that 
to  the  Hurons  and  Algonquins  of  Quebec.  They  are 
not  trying  to  turn  Indians  into  white  men  and  women 
at  this  mission.  They  are  leaving  them  Indians  with 
the  leaven  of  a  new  grace  working  in  their  hearts. 
The  Navajos  are  to-day  22,000  strong,  and  on  the 
increase.  The  Hurons  and  Algonquins  alive  to-day, 
you  can  almost  count  on  your  hands.  Driven  from 
pillar  to  post,  they  were  destroyed  by  the  civilization 
they  had  embraced;  but  the  Navajos  have  a  realm 
perfectly  adapted  to  sustain  their  herds  and  broad 
enough  for  them  to  expand--  14,000,000  acres,  in- 
cluding Moki  Land  —  and  against  any  white  man's 
greedy  encroachment  on  that  Reserve,  Father  Web- 
ber, of  the  Franciscans,  has  set  his  face  like  adamant. 
In  two  or  three  generations,  we  shall  be  putting  up 
monuments  to  these  workers  among  the  Navajos. 


ACROSS  THE  PAINTED  DESERT     in 

Meanwhile,  we  neither  know  nor  care  what  they  are 
doing. 

You  enter  the  silent  hallway  and  ring  a  gong.  A 
Navajo  interpreter  appears  and  tells  you  Father 
Webber  has  gone  to  Rome,  but  Father  Berrard  will 
be  down;  and  when  you  meet  the  cowled  Franciscan 
in  his  rough,  brown  cassock,  with  sandal  shoes,  you 
might  shut  your  eyes  and  imagine  yourself  back  in  the 
Quebec  consistories  of  three  centuries  ago.  There  is 
the  same  poverty,  the  same  quiet  devotion,  the  same 
consecrated  scholarship,  the  same  study  of  race  and 
legend,  as  made  the  Jesuit  missions  famous  all 
through  Europe  of  the  Seventeenth  Century.  Why, 
do  you  know,  this  Franciscan  mission,  with  its  three 
priests  and  two  lay  helpers,  is  sustained  on  the  small 
sum  of  $1,000  a  year;  and  out  of  his  share  of  that, 
Father  Berrard  has  managed  to  buy  a  printing  press 
and  issue  a  scholarly  work  on  the  Navajos,  costing 
him  $1,500! 

Next  morning,  when  Mother  Josephine,  of  Miss 
Drexel's  Mission  School,  drove  us  back  to  the  Fran- 
ciscan's house,  we  saw  proofs  of  a  second  volume  on 
the  Navajos,  which  Father  Berrard  is  issuing;  a  com- 
bined glossary  and  dictionary  of  information  on  tribal 
customs  and  arts  and  crafts  and  legends  and  religion; 
a  work  of  which  a  French  academician  would  be  more 
than  proud.  Then  he  shows  us  what  will  easily 
prove  the  masterpiece  of  his  life  —  hundreds  of  draw- 
ings, which,  for  the  last  ten  years,  he  has  been  having 
the  medicine  men  of  the  Navajos  make  for  their 


ii2     ACROSS  THE  PAINTED  DESERT 

legends,  of  all  the  authentic,  known  patterns  of  their 
blankets  and  the  meanings,  of  their  baskets  and  what 
they  mean,  and  of  the  heavenly  constellations,  which 
are  much  the  same  as  ours  except  that  the  names  are 
those  of  the  coyote  and  eagle  and  other  desert  crea- 
tures instead  of  the  Latin  appellations.  Lungren 
and  Burbank  and  Curtis  and  other  artists,  who  have 
passed  this  way,  suggested  the  idea.  Someone  sent 
Father  Berrard  folios  of  blank  drawing  boards. 
Sepia  made  of  coal  dust  and  white  chalk  made  of 
gypsum  suffice  for  pigments.  With  these  he  has  had 
the  Indian  medicine  men  make  a  series  of  drawings 
that  excels  anything  in  the  Smithsonian  Institute  of 
Washington  or  the  Field  Museum  of  Chicago.  For 
instance,  there  is  the  map  of  the  sky  and  of  the  milky 
way  with  the  four  cardinal  points  marked  in  the 
Navajo  colors,  white,  blue,  black  and  yellow,  with 
the  legend  drawn  of  the  "  great  medicine  man " 
putting  the  stars  in  their  places  in  the  sky,  when  along 
comes  Coyote,  steals  the  mystery  bag  of  stars  —  and 
puff,  with  one  breath  he  has  mischievously  sent  the 
divine  sparks  scattering  helter-skelter  all  over  the  face 
of  heaven.  There  is  the  legend  of  "  the  spider 
maid  "  teaching  the  Navajos  to  weave  their  wonder- 
ful blankets,  though  the  Hopi  deny  this  and  assert 
that  their  women  captured  in  war  were  the  ones  who 
taught  the  Navajos  the  art  of  weaving.  There  is  the 
picture  of  the  Navajo  transmigration  of  souls  up  the 
twelve  degrees  of  a  huge  corn  stalk,  for  all  the  world 
like  the  Hindoo  legend  of  a  soul's  travail  up  to  life. 
You  must  not  forget  how  similar  many  of  the  Indian 


ACROSS  THE  PAINTED  DESERT     113 

drawings  are  to  Oriental  work.  Then,  there  is  the 
picture  of  the  supreme  woman  deity  of  the  Navajos. 
Does  that  recall  any  Mother  of  Life  in  Hindoo  lore? 
If  all  ethnologists  and  archaeologists  had  founded 
their  studies  on  the  Indian's  own  account  of  himself, 
rather  than  their  own  scrappy  version  of  what  the 
Indian  told  them,  we  should  have  got  somewhere  in 
our  knowledge  of  the  relationships  of  the  human  race. 

Father  Berrard's  drawings  in  color  of  all  known 
patterns  of  Navajo  blankets  are  a  gold  mine  in 
themselves,  and  would  save  the  squandering  by  East- 
ern buyers  of  thousands  a  year  in  faked  Navajo 
blankets.  Wherever  Father  Berrard  hears  of  a  new 
blanket  pattern,  thither  he  hies  to  get  a  drawing  of 
it;  and  on  many  a  fool's  errand  his  quest  has  taken 
him.  For  instance,  he  once  heard  of  a  wonderful 
blanket  being  displayed  by  a  Flagstaff  dealer,  with 
vegetable  dyes  of  "  green  "  in  it.  Dressing  in  dis- 
guise, with  overcoat  collar  turned  up,  the  priest  went 
to  examine  the  alleged  wonder.  It  was  a  palpable 
cheat  manufactured  in  the  East  for  the  benefit  of 
gullible  tourists. 

"  Where  did  your  Indians  get  that  vegetable 
green?"  Father  Berrard  asked  the  unsuspecting 
dealer. 

"  From  frog  ponds,"  answered  the  store  man  of  a 
region  where  water  is  scarce  as  hens'  teeth. 

Father  Berrard  has  not  yet  finished  his  collection 
of  drawings,  for  the  medicine  men  will  reveal  certain 
secrets  only  when  the  moon  and  stars  are  in  a  certain 
position;  but  he  vows  that  when  the  book  is  finished 


ii4    ACROSS  THE  PAINTED  DESERT 

and  when  he  has  saved  money  enough  to  issue  it,  his 
nom  de  plume  shall  be  "  Frog  Pond  Green." 

If  we  had  been  a  party  of  men,  we  should  probably 
have  been  put  up  at  either  the  Franciscan  Mission,  or 
Day's  Ranch ;  but  being  women  we  were  conducted  a 
mile  farther  down  the  arroyo  to  Miss  Drexel's  Mis- 
sion School  for  Indian  boys  and  girls.  Here  150 
little  Navajos  come  every  year,  not  to  be  transformed 
into  white  boys  and  girls,  but  to  be  trained  inside  and 
out  in  cleanliness  and  uprightness  and  grace.  There 
are  in  all  fourteen  members  of  the  sisterhood  here, 
much  the  same  type  of  women  in  birth  and  station 
and  training  as  the  polished  nobility  that  founded  the 
first  religious  institutions  of  New  France.  Perhaps, 
because  the  Jesuit  relations  record  such  a  terrible  tale 
of  martyrdom,  one  somehow  or  other  associates  those 
early  Indian  missions  with  religions  of  a  dolorous 
cast.  Not  so  here !  A  happier-faced  lot  of  women 
and  children  you  never  saw  than  these  delicately  nur- 
tured sisters  and  their  swarthy- faced,  black-eyed  little 
wards.  These  sisters  evidently  believe  that  goodness 
should  be  a  thing  more  beautiful,  more  joyous,  more 
robust  than  evil;  that  the  temptation  to  be  good 
should  be  greater  than  the  compulsion  to  be  evil. 
Sisters  are  playing  tag  with  the  little  Indian  girls  in 
one  yard;  laymen  helpers  teaching  Navajo  boys  base- 
ball on  the  open  common ;  and  from  one  of  the  upper 
halls  comes  the  sound  of  a  brass  band  tuning  up  for 
future  festivities. 

We  were  presently  ensconced  in  the  quarters  set 
aside  for  guests;  room,  parlor  and  refectory,  where 


ACROSS  THE  PAINTED  DESERT     115 

two  gentle-faced  sisters  placed  all  sorts  of  temptations 
on  our  plates  and  gathered  news  of  the  big,  outside 
world.  Then  Mother  Josephine  came  in,  a  Southern 
face  with  youth  in  every  feature  and  youth  in  her 
heart,  and  merry,  twinkling,  tender,  understanding 
eyes. 

Presently,  you  hear  a  bugle-call  signal  the  boys 
from  play;  and  the  bell  sounds  to  prayers;  and  a 
great  stillness  falls ;  and  you  would  not  know  this  was 
Navajo  Land  at  all  but  for  the  bright  blanketed  folk 
camped  on  the  hill  to  the  right  —  eerie  figures  seen 
against  the  pink  glow  of  the  fading  light. 

Next  morning  we  attended  mass  in  the  little  chapel 
upstairs.  Priest  in  vestment,  altar  aglow  with  lights 
and  flowers,  little  black-eyed  faces  bending  over  their 
prayers,  the  chanting  of  gently  nurtured  voices  from 
the  stalls  —  is  it  the  Desert  we  are  in,  or  an  oasis 
watered  by  that  age-old,  never-failing  spring  of 
Service  ? 


CHAPTER  VII 

ACROSS    THE    PAINTED    DESERT    THROUGH    NAVAJO 
LAND    (continued) 

THERE  are  two  ways  to  travel  even  off  the 
beaten  trail.  One  is  to  take  a  map,  stake 
out  pins  on  the  points  you  are  going  to 
visit,  then  pace  up  to  them  lightning-flier  fashion. 
If  you  want  to,  and  are  prepared  to  kill  your  horses, 
you  can  cross  Navajo  Land  in  from  three  to  four 
days.  Even  going  at  that  pace,  you  can  get  a  sense 
of  the  wonderful  coloring  of  the  Painted  Desert,  of 
the  light  lying  in  shimmering  heat  layers  split  by  the 
refraction  of  the  dusty  air  in  prismatic  hues,  of  an 
atmosphere  with  the  tang  of  northern  ozone  and  the 
resinous  scent  of  incense  and  frankincense  and 
myrrh.  You  can  see  the  Desert  flowers  that  vie  with 
the  sun  in  brilliant  coloring;  and  feel  the  Desert 
night  sky  come  down  so  close  to  you  that  you  want 
to  reach  up  a  hand  and  pluck  the  jack-o'-lantern 
stars  swinging  so  low  through  the  pansy-velvet  mist. 
You  can  even  catch  a  flying  glimpse  of  the  most 
picturesque  Indian  race  in  America,  the  Navajos. 
Their  hogans  or  circular,  mud-wattled  houses,  are 
always  somewhere  near  the  watering  pools  and  rock 
springs;  and  just  when  you  think  you  are  most  alone, 
driving  through  the  sagebrush  and  dwarf  juniper, 

1x6 


ACROSS  THE  PAINTED  DESERT     117 

the  bleat  of  a  lamb  is  apt  to  call  your  attention  to  a 
flock  of  sheep  and  goats  scattered  almost  invisibly 
up  a  blue-green  hillside.  Blue-green,  did  you  say? 
Yes:  that's  another  thing  you  can  unlearn  on  a  flying 
trip  —  the  geography  definition  of  a  Desert  is  about 
as  wrong  as  a  definition  could  be  made.  A  Desert 
isn't  necessarily  a  vast  sandy  plain,  stretching  out  in 
flat  and  arid  waste.  It's  as  variegated  in  its  growth 
and  landscape  as  your  New  England  or  Old  England 
hills  and  vales,  only  your  Eastern  rivers  flow  all  the 
time,  and  your  Desert  rivers  are  apt  to  disappear 
through  evaporation  and  sink  below  the  surface  dur- 
ing the  heat  of  the  day,  coming  up  again  in  floods 
during  the  rainy  months,  and  in  pools  during  the 
cool  of  morning  and  evening. 

But  on  a  flying  trip,  you  can't  learn  the  secret 
moods  of  the  Painted  Desert.  You  can't  draw  so 
much  of  its  atmosphere  into  your  soul  that  you  can 
never  think  of  it  again  without  such  dream-visions 
floating  you  away  in  its  blue-gray-lilac  mists  as 
wrapped  the  seers  of  old  in  clairvoyant  prophetic 
ecstasy.  On  a  flying  trip,  you  can  learn  little  or 
nothing  of  the  Arab  life  of  our  own  Desert  nomads. 
You  have  to  depend  on  Blue  Book  reports  of  "  the 
Navajos  being  a  dangerous,  warlike  race  "  blasted 
into  submission  by  the  effulgent  glory  of  this,  that, 
and  the  other  military  martinet  writing  himself  down 
a  hero.  Whereas,  if  you  go  out  leisurely  among  the 
traders  and  missionaries  and  Indians  themselves, 
who  —  more's  the  pity  —  have  no  hand  in  preparing 
official  reports,  you  will  learn  another  story  of  a 


n8     ACROSS  THE  PAINTED  DESERT 

quiet,  pastoral  race  who  have  for  three  hundred 
years  been  the  victims  of  white  man  greed  and  white 
man  lust,  of  blundering  incompetency  and  hysterical 
cowardice. 

These  are  strong  words.  Let  me  give  some  in- 
stances. We  were  having  luncheon  in  the  priests' 
refectory  of  the  Franciscan  Mission;  and  for  the 
benefit  of  those  who  imagine  that  missionaries  to  the 
Indians  are  fat  and  bloated  on  three  hundred  a  year, 
I  should  like  to  set  down  the  fact  that  the  refectory 
was  in  a  sort  of  back  kitchen,  that  we  ate  off  a  red 
table-cloth  with  soup  served  in  a  basin  and  bath 
towels  extemporized  into  serviettes.  I  had  asked 
about  a  Navajo,  who  not  long  ago  went  locoed  right 
in  Cincinnati  station  and  began  stabbing  murderously 
right  and  left. 

"  In  the  first  place, "  answered  the  Franciscan, 
"  that  Indian  ought  not  to  have  been  in  Cincinnati 
at  all.  In  the  second  place,  he  ought  not  to  have 
been  there  alone.  In  the  third  place,  he  had  great 
provocation." 

Here  is  the  story,  as  I  gathered  it  from  traders 
and  missionaries  and  Indians.  The  Navajo  was 
having  trouble  over  title  to  his  land.  That  was 
wrong  the  first  on  the  part  of  the  white  man.  It  was 
necessary  for  him  to  go  to  Washington  to  lay  his 
grievance  before  the  Government.  Now  for  an 
Indian  to  go  to  Washington  is  as  great  an  under- 
taking as  it  was  for  Stanley  to  go  to  Darkest  Africa. 
The  trip  ought  not  to  have  been  necessary  if  our 
Indian  Office  had  more  integrity  and  less  red-tape; 


ACROSS  THE  PAINTED  DESERT     119 

but  the  local  agency  provided  him  with  an  inter- 
preter. The  next  great  worry  to  the  Navajo  was 
that  he  could  not  get  access  to  "  The  Great  White 
Father."  There  were  interminable  red-tape  and  de- 
lay. Finally,  when  he  got  access  to  the  Indian  Of- 
fice, he  could  get  no  definite,  prompt  settlement. 
With  this  accumulation  of  small  worries,  insignificant 
enough  to  a  well-to-do  white  man  but  mighty 
harassing  to  a  poor  Indian,  he  set  out  for  home; 
and  at  the  station  in  Washington,  the  interpreter  left 
him.  The  Navajo  could  not  speak  one  word  of 
English.  Changing  cars  in  Cincinnati,  hustled  and 
jostled  by  the  crowds,  he  suddenly  felt  for  his  purse 

—  he  had  been  robbed.     Now,  the  Navajo  code  is 
if  another  tribe  injures  his  tribe,  it  is  his  duty  to  go 
forth  instantly  and  strike  that  offender.     Our  own 
Saxon  and  Highland  Scotch  ancestors  once  had  a 
code  very  similar.     The  Indian  at  once  went  locoed 

—  lost  his  head,  and  began  stabbing  right  and  left. 
The  white  man  newspaper  told  the  story  of  the  mur- 
derous assault  in  flare  head  lines;  but  it  didn't  tell 
the  story  of  wrongs  and  procrastination.     The  In- 
dian Office  righted  the  land  matter;  but  that  didn't 
undo  the  damage.     Through  the  efforts  of  the  mis- 
sionaries and  the  traders,  the  Indian  was  permitted 
to  plead  insanity.     He  was  sent  to  an  asylum,  where 
he  must  have  had  some  queer  thoughts  of  white  man 
justice.     Just  recently,  he  has  been  released  under 
bonds. 

The  most  notorious  case  of  wrong  and  outrage 
and  cowardice  and  murder  known  in  Navajo  Land 


120    ACROSS  THE  PAINTED  DESERT 

was  that  of  a  few  years  ago,  when  the  Indian  agent 
peremptorily  ordered  a  Navajo  to  bring  his  child 
in  to  the  Agency  School.  Not  so  did  Marmon  and 
Pratt  sway  the  Indians  at  Laguna,  when  the  Pueblos 
there  were  persuaded  to  send  their  children  to  Car- 
lisle; and  Miss  Drexel's  Mission  has  never  yet  is- 
sued peremptory  orders  for  children  to  come  to 
school;  but  the  martinet  mandate  went  forth.  Now, 
the  Indian  treaty,  that  provides  the  child  shall  be 
sent  to  school,  also  stipulates  that  the  school  shall 
be  placed  within  reach  of  the  child;  and  the  Navajo 
knew  that  he  was  within  his  right  in  refusing  to  let 
the  child  leave  home  when  the  Government  had 
failed  to  place  the  school  within  such  distance  of  his 
hogan.  He  was  then  warned  by  the  agent  that  un- 
less the  child  were  sent  within  a  certain  time,  troops 
would  be  summoned  from  Ft.  Wingate  and  Ft.  De- 
fiance. The  Indians  met,  pow-wowed  with  one  an- 
other, and  decided  they  were  still  within  their  right 
in  refusing.  There  can  be  no  doubt  but  that  if  Cap- 
tain Willard,  himself,  had  been  in  direct  command 
of  the  detachment,  the  cowardly  murder  would  not 
-have  occurred;  but  the  Navajos  were  only  Indians; 
and  the  troops  arrived  on  the  scene  in  charge  of  a 
hopelessly  incompetent  subordinate,  who  proved  him- 
self not  only  a  bully  but  a  most  arrant  coward.  Ac- 
cording to  the  traders  and  the  missionaries  and  the 
Indians  themselves,  the  Navajos  were  not  even 
armed.  Fourteen  of  them  were  in  one  of  the  mud 
hogans.  They  offered  no  resistance.  They  say 
they  were  not  even  summoned  to  surrender.  Trad- 


ACROSS  THE  PAINTED  DESERT     121 

ers,  who  have  talked  with  the  Navajos  present,  say 
the  troopers  surrounded  the  hogan  in  the  dark,  a 
soldier's  gun  went  off  by  mistake  and  the  command 
was  given  in  hysterical  fright  to  "  fire."  The  In- 
dians were  so  terrified  that  they  dashed  out  to  hide 
in  the  sagebrush.  "  Bravery  I  Indian  bravery  — 
pah,"  one  officer  of  the  detachment  was  afterwards 
heard  to  exclaim.  Two  Navajos  were  killed,  one 
wounded,  eleven  captured  in  as  cold-blooded  a  mur- 
der as  was  ever  perpetrated  by  thugs  in  a  city  street. 
Without  lawyers,  without  any  defense  whatsoever, 
without  the  hearing  of  witnesses,  without  any  fair 
trial  whatsoever,  the  captives  were  sentenced  to  the 
penitentiary.  It  needed  only  a  finishing  touch  to 
make  this  piece  of  Dreyfusism  complete;  and  that 
came  when  a  little  missionary  voiced  the  general 
sense  of  outrage  by  writing  a  letter  to  a  Denver 
paper.  President  Roosevelt  at  once  dispatched  some- 
one from  Washington  to  investigate;  and  it  was  an 
easy  matter  to  scare  the  wits  out  of  the  little  preacher 
and  declare  the  investigation  closed.  In  fact,  it  was 
one  of  the  things  that  would  not  bear  investigation; 
but  the  evidence  still  exists  in  Navajo  Land,  with 
more,  which  space  forbids  here  but  which  comes  un- 
der the  sixty-fifth  Article  of  War.  The  officer 
guilty  of  this  outrage  has  since  been  examined  as  to 
his  sanity  and  brought  himself  under  possibilities  of 
a  penitentiary  term  on  another  count.  He  is  still 
at  middle  age  a  subordinate  officer. 

These  are  other  secrets  of  the  Painted  Desert  you 
will    daily    con    if    you    go    leisurely    across    the 


122     ACROSS  THE  PAINTED  DESERT 

great  lone  Reserve  and  do  not  take  with  you  the 
lightning-express  habits  of  urban  life. 

For  instance,  in  the  account  of  the  Cave  Dwellers 
of  the  Frijoles  reference  was  made  to  the  Indian 
legend  of  "  the  heavens  raining  fire  "  (volcanic  ac- 
tion) and  driving  the  prehistoric  Pueblo  peoples 
from  their  ancient  dwelling.  Mrs.  Day  of  St. 
Michael's,  who  has  forgotten  more  lore  than  the 
scientists  will  ever  pick  up,  told  me  of  a  great  chunk 
of  lava  found  by  Mr.  Day  in  which  were  embedded 
some  perfect  specimens  of  corn  —  which  seems  to 
sustain  the  Indian  legend  of  volcanic  outburst  having 
destroyed  the  ancient  nations  here.  The  slab  was 
sent  East  to  a  museum  in  Brooklyn.  Some  scientists 
explain  these  black  slabs  as  a  fusion  of  adobe. 

As  we  had  not  yet  learned  how  to  do  the  Painted 
Desert,  we  went  forward  by  the  mail  wagon  from 
St.  Michael's  to  Mr.  HubbelPs  famous  trading  post 
at  Ganado.  Mail  bags  were  stacked  up  behind  us, 
and  a  one-eyed  Navajo  driver  sat  in  front.  We  were 
in  the  Desert,  but  our  way  led  through  the  park-like 
vistas  of  the  mast-high  yellow  pine,  a  region  of  such 
high,  rare,  dry  air  that  not  a  blade  of  grass  grows 
below  the  conifers.  The  soil  is  as  dry  as  dust  and 
fine  as  flour;  and  there  is  an  all-pervasive  odor,  not 
of  burning,  but  of  steaming  resin,  or  pine  sap  heated 
to  evaporation;  but  it  is  not  hot.  The  mesa  runs 
up  to  an  altitude  of  almost  9,000  feet,  with  air  so 
light  that  you  feel  a  buoyant  lift  to  your  heart-beats 
and  a  clearing  of  the  cobwebs  from  your  brain.  You 


ACROSS  THE  PAINTED  DESERT     123 

can  lose  lots  of  sleep  here  and  not  feel  it.  All 
heaviness  has  gone  out  of  body  and  soul.  In  fact, 
when  you  come  back  to  lower  levels,  the  air  feels 
thick  and  hard  to  breathe.  And  you  can  go  hard 
here  and  not  tire,  and  stand  on  the  crest  of  mesas 
that  anywhere  else  would  be  considered  mountains, 
and  wave  your  arms  above  the  top  of  the  world. 
So  high  you  are  —  you  did  not  realize  it  —  that  the 
rim  of  encircling  mountains  is  only  a  tiny  wave  of 
purplish  green  sky-line  like  the  edge  of  an  inverted 
blue  bowl. 

The  mesas  rise  and  rise,  and  presently  you  are 
out  and  above  forest  line  altogether  among  the  sage- 
brush shimmering  in  pure  light;  and  you  become 
aware  of  a  great  quiet,  a  great  silence,  such  as  you 
feel  on  mountain  peaks;  and  you  suddenly  realize 
how  rare  and  scarce  life  is  —  life  of  bird  or  beast 
—  at  these  high  levels.  The  reason  is,  of  course, 
the  scarcity  of  water,  though  on  our  way  out  just 
below  this  mesa  at  the  side  of  a  dry  arroyo  we  found 
one  of  the  wayside  springs  that  make  life  of  any 
kind  possible  in  the  Desert. 

Then  the  trail  began  dropping  down,  down  in 
loops  and  twists;  and  just  at  sunset  we  turned  up  a 
dry  arroyo  bed  to  a  cluster  of  adobe  ranch  houses 
and  store  and  mission.  Thousands  of  plaintively 
bleating  goats  and  sheep  seemed  to  be  coming  out 
of  the  juniper  hills  to  the  watering  pool,  herded  as 
usual  by  little  girls;  for  the  custom  is  to  dower  each 
child  at  birth  with  sheep  or  ponies,  the  increase  of 
which  becomes  that  child's  wealth  for  life.  Navajo 


i24    ACROSS  THE  PAINTED  DESERT 

men  rode  up  and  down  the  arroyo  bed  as  graceful 
and  gayly  caparisoned  as  Arabs,  or  lounged  around 
the  store  building  smoking.  Huge  wool  wagons 
loaded  three  layers  deep  with  the  season's  fleece 
stood  in  front  of  the  rancho.  Women  with  children 
squatted  on  the  ground,  but  the  thing  that  struck  you 
first  as  always  in  the  Painted  Desert  was  color:  color 
in  the  bright  headbands;  color  in  the  close-fitting 
plush  shirts;  color  in  the  Germantown  blankets  — 
for  the  Navajo. blanket  is  too  heavy  for  Desert  use; 
color  in  the  lemon  and  lilac  belts  across  the  sunset 
sky;  color,  more  color,  in  the  blood-red  sand  hills 
and  bright  ochre  rocks  and  whirling  orange  dust 
clouds  where  riders  or  herds  of  sheep  were  scouring 
up  the  sandy  arroyo.  No  wonder  Burbank  and 
Lungren  and  Curtis  go  mad  over  the  color  of  this 
subtle  land  of  mystery  and  half-tones  and  shadows 
and  suggestions.  If  you  haven't  seen  Curtis'  figures 
and  Burbank's  heads  and  Lungren's  marvelously 
beautiful  Desert  scenes  of  this  land,  you  have  missed 
some  of  the  best  work  being  done  in  the  art  world 
to-day.  If  this  work  were  done  in  Europe  it  would 
command  its  tens  of  thousands,  where  with  us  it 
commands  only  its  hundreds.  Nothing  that  the  Pre- 
Raphaelites  ever  did  in  the  Holy  Lands  equals  in 
expressiveness  and  power  Lungren's  studies  of  the 
Desert;  though  the  Pre-Raphaelites  commanded 
prices  of  $10,000  and  $25,000,  where  we  as  a  na- 
tion grumble  about  paying  our  artists  one  thousand 
and  two  thousand. 

The  Navajo  driver  nodded  back  to  us  that  this 


ACROSS  THE  PAINTED  DESERT     125 

was  Ganado;  and  in  a  few  moments  Mr.  Hubbell 
had  come  from  the  trading  post  to  welcome  us  under 
a  roof  that  in  thirty  years  has  never  permitted  a 
stranger  to  pass  its  doors  unwelcomed.  As  Mr. 
Lorenzo  Hubbell  has  already  entered  history  in  the 
makings  of  Arizona  and  as  he  shuns  the  limelight 
quite  as  "  mollycoddles  "  (his  favorite  term)  seek 
the  spotlights,  a  slight  account  of  him  may  not  be 
out  of  place.  First,  as  to  his  house:  from  the  out- 
side you  see  the  typical  squat  adobe  oblong  so  suited 
to  a  climate  where  hot  winds  are  the  enemies  to 
comfort.  You  notice  as  you  enter  the  front  door 
that  the  walls  are  two  feet  or  more  thick.  Then 
you  take  a  breath.  You  had  expected  a  bare  ranch 
interior  with  benches  and  stiff  chairs  backed  up 
against  the  wall.  Instead,  you  see  a  huge  living- 
room  forty  or  fifty  feet  long,  every  square  foot  of 
the  walls  covered  by  paintings  and  drawings  of 
Western  life.  Every  artist  of  note  (with  the  ex- 
ception of  one)  who  has  done  a  picture  on  the  South- 
west in  the  last  thirty  years  is  represented  by  a 
canvas  here.  You  could  spend  a  good  week  study- 
ing the  paintings  of  the  Hubbell  Ranch.  Including 
sepias,  oils  and  watercolors,  there  must  be  almost 
300  pictures.  By  chance,  you  look  up  to  the 
raftered  ceiling;  a  specimen  of  every  kind  of  rare 
basketry  made  by  the  Indians  hangs  from  the  beams. 
On  the  floor  lie  Navajo  rugs  of  priceless  value  and 
rarest  weave.  When  you  go  over  to  Mr.  Hubbell's 
office,  you  find  that  he,  like  Father  Berrard,  has 
colored  drawings  of  every  type  of  Moki  and  Navajo 


126    ACROSS  THE  PAINTED  DESERT 

blankets.  On  the  walls  of  the  office  are  more  pic- 
tures; on  the  floors,  more  rugs;  in  the  safes  and 
cases,  specimens  of  rare  silver-work  that  somehow 
again  remind  you  of  the  affinity  between  Hindoo  and 
Navajo.  Mr.  Hubbell  yearly  does  a  quarter-of-a- 
million-dollar  business  in  wool,  and  yearly  extends 
to  the  Navajos  credit  for  amounts  running  from 
twenty-five  dollars  to  fifty  thousand  dollars  —  a  trust 
which  they  have  never  yet  betrayed. 

Along  the  walls  of  the  living-room  are  doors 
opening  to  the  sleeping  apartments;  and  in  each  of 
the  many  guest  rooms  are  more  pictures,  more  rugs. 
Behind  the  living-room  is  a  placito  flanked  by  the 
kitchen  and  cook's  quarters. 

Now  what  manner  of  man  is  this  so-called  "  King 
of  Northern  Arizona  "  ?  A  lover  of  art  and  a  pa- 
tron of  it;  also  the  shrewdest  politician  and  trader 
that  ever  dwelt  in  Navajo  Land;  a  man  with  friends, 
who  would  like  the  privilege  of  dying  for  him;  also 
with  enemies  who  would  keenly  like  the  privilege  of 
helping  him  to  die.  What  the  chief  factors  of  the 
Hudson's  Bay  Company  used  to  be  to  the  Indians  of 
the  North,  Lorenzo  Hubbell  has  been  to  the  Indians 
of  the  Desert  —  friend,  guard,  counselor,  with  a 
strong  hand  to  punish  when  they  required  it,  but  a 
stronger  hand  to  befriend  when  help  was  needed; 
always  and  to  the  hilt  an  enemy  to  the  cheap-jack 
politician  who  came  to  exploit  the  Indian,  though 
he  might  have  to  beat  the  rascal  at  his  own  game  of 
putting  up  a  bigger  bluff.  In  appearance,  a  fine  type 
of  the  courtly  Spanish-American  gentleman  with 


ACROSS  THE  PAINTED  DESERT     127 

Castilian  blue  eyes  and  black,  beetling  brows  and 
gray  hair;  with  a  courtliness  that  keeps  you  guessing 
as  to  how  much  more  gracious  the  next  courtesy  can 
be  than  the  last,  and  a  funny  anecdote  to  cap  every 
climax.  You  would  not  think  to  look  at  Mr.  Hub- 
bell  that  time  was  when  he  as  nonchalantly  cut  the 
cards,  for  $30,000  and  as  gracefully  lost  it  all,  as 
other  men  match  dimes  for  cigars.  And  you  can't 
make  him  talk  about  himself.  It  is  from  others  you 
must  learn  that  in  the  great  cattle  and  sheep  war, 
in  which  150  men  lost  their  lives,  it  was  he  who  led 
the  native  Mexican  sheep  owners  against  the  ag- 
gressive cattle  crowd.  They  are  all  friends  now, 
the  oldtime  enemies,  and  have  buried  their  feud; 
and  dynamite  will  not  force  Mr.  Hubbell  to  open 
his  mouth  on  the  subject.  In  fact,  it  was  a  pair  of 
the  "  rustlers  "  themselves  who  told  me  of  the  time 
that  the  cowboys  took  a  swoop  into  the  Navajo  Re- 
serve and  stampeded  off  300  of  the  Indians'  best 
horses ;  but  they  had  reckoned  without  Lorenzo  Hub- 
bell.  In  twenty-four  hours  he  had  got  together  the 
swiftest  riders  of  the  Navajos;  and  in  another 
twenty-four  hours,  he  had  pursued  the  thieves  125 
miles  into  the  wildest  canons  of  Arizona  and  had 
rescued  every  horse.  One  of  the  men,  whom  he  had 
pursued,  wiped  the  sweat  from  his  brow  in  memory 
of  it.  He  is  more  than  a  type  of  the  Spanish- 
American  gentleman.  He  is  a  type  of  the  man  that 
the  Desert  produces:  quiet,  soft  spoken  —  power- 
fully soft  spoken  —  alert,  keen,  relentless  and 
versatile;  but  also  a  dreamer  of  dreams,  a  seer  of 


128     ACROSS  THE  PAINTED  DESERT 

visions,  a  passionate  patriot,  and  a  lover  of  art  who 
proves  his  love  by  buying. 

The  Navajos  are  to-day  by  long  odds  the  most 
prosperous  Indians  in  America.  Their  vast  Reserve 
offers  ample  pasturage  for  their  sheep  and  ponies; 
and  though  their  flocks  are  a  scrub  lot,  yielding  little 
more  than  fifty  to  seventy  cents  a  head  in  wool  on 
the  average,  still  it  costs  nothing  to  keep  sheep  and 
goats.  Both  furnish  a  supply  of  meat.  The  hides 
fetch  ready  money.  So  does  the  wool,  so  do  the 
blankets;  and  the  Navajos  are  the  finest  silversmiths 
in  America.  Formerly,  they  obtained  their  supply 
of  raw  silver  bullion  from  the  Spaniards ;  but  to-day, 
they  melt  and  hammer  down  United  States  currency 
into  butterfly  brooches  and  snake  bracelets  and 
leather  belts  with  the  fifty-cent  coins  changed  into 
flower  blossoms  with  a  turquoise  center.  Ten-cent 
pieces  and  quarters  are  transformed  into  necklaces 
of  silver  beads,  or  buttons  for  shirt  and  moccasins. 
If  you  buy  these  things  in  the  big  Western  cities,  they 
are  costly  as  Chinese  or  Hindoo  silver;  but  on  the 
Reserve,  there  is  a  very  simple  way  of  computing 
the  value.  First,  take  the  value  of  the  coin  from 
which  the  silver  ornament  is  made.  Add  a  dollar 
for  the  silversmith's  labor;  and  also  add  whatever 
value  the  turquoise  happens  to  be ;  and  you  have  the 
price  for  which  true  Navajo  silver-work  can  be 
bought  out  on  the  Reserve. 

Among  the  Navajos,  the  women  weave  the  blan- 
kets and  baskets;  among  the  Moki,  the  men,  while 
the  women  are  the  great  pottery  makers.  The  value 


ACROSS  THE  PAINTED  DESERT     129 

of  these  out  on  the  Reserve  is  exactly  in  proportion 
to  the  intricacy  of  the  work,  the  plain  native  wool 
colors  —  black,  gray,  white  and  brown  —  varying 
in  price  from  seventy  cents  to  $1.25  a  pound;  the 
fine  bayetta  or  red  weave,  which  is  finer  than  any  ma- 
chine can  produce  and  everlasting  in  its  durability, 
fetching  pretty  nearly  any  price  the  owner  asks. 
Other  colors  than  the  bayetta  red  and  native  wool 
shades,  I  need  scarcely  say  here,  are  in  bought  min- 
eral dyes.  True  bayettas,  which  are  almost  a  lost 
art,  bring  as  high  as  $1,500  each  from  a  connoisseur. 
Other  native  wools  vary  in  price  according  to  size 
and  color  from  $15  to  $150.  Off  the  Reserve,  these 
prices  are  simply  doubled.  From  all  of  which,  it 
should  be  evident  that  no  thrifty  Navajo  need  be 
poor.  His  house  costs  nothing.  It  is  made  of  cedar 
shakes  stuck  up  in  the  ground  crutchwise  and  wattled 
with  mud.  Strangely  enough,  the  Navajo  no  longer 
uses  his  own  blankets.  They  are  too  valuable ;  also, 
too  heavy  for  the  climate.  He  uses  the  cheap  and 
gaudy  Germantown  patterns. 

At  seven  one  morning  in  May,  equipped  with  one 
of  Mr.  HubbelPs  fastest  teams  and  a  good  Mexican 
driver  who  knew  the  trail,  we  set  out  from  Ganado 
for  Ream's  Canon.  It  need  scarcely  be  stated  here 
that  in  Desert  travel  you  must  carry  your  water  keg, 
"  grub  "  box  and  horse  feed  with  you.  All  these, 
up  to  the  present,  Mr.  Hubbell  has  freely  supplied 
passersby ;  but  as  travel  increases  through  the  Painted 
Desert,  it  is  a  system  that  must  surely  be  changed, 


130    ACROSS  THE  PAINTED  DESERT 

not  because  the  public  love  Mr.  Hubbell  "  less,  but 


more." 


The  morning  air  was  pure  wine.  The  hills  were 
veiled  in  a  lilac  light  —  tones,  half-tones,  shades  and 
subtle  suggestions  of  subdued  glory  —  with  an  al- 
most Alpine  glow  where  the  red  sunrise  came 
through  notches  of  the  painted  peaks.  Hogan  after 
hogan,  with  sheep  corrals  in  cedar  shakes,  we  passed, 
where  little  boys  and  girls  were  driving  the  sheep 
and  goats  up  and  down  from  the  watering  places. 
Presently,  as  you  drive  northwestward,  there  swim 
through  the  opaline  haze  peculiar  to  the  Desert, 
purplish-green  forested  peaks  splashed  with  snow  on 
the  summit — the  Francisco  Mountains  of  Flagstaff 
far  to  the  South;  and  you  are  on  a  high  sagebrush 
mesa,  like  a  gray  sea,  with  miles,  miles  upon  miles 
(for  three  hours  you  drive  through  it)  of  delicate, 
lilac-scented  bloom,  the  sagebrush  in  blossom.  I  can 
liken  it  to  nothing  but  the  appearance  of  the  sea 
at  sunrise  or  sunset  when  a  sort  of  misty  lavender 
light  follows  the  red  glow.  This  mesa  leads  you 
into  the  cedar  woods,  an  incense-scented  forest  far 
as  you  can  see  for  hours  and  hours.  You  begin  to 
understand  how  a  desert  has  not  only  mountains  and 
hills  but  forests.  In  fact,  the  northern  belt  of  the 
Painted  Desert  comprises  the  Kaibab  Forest,  and  the 
southern  belt  the  Tusayan  and  Coconino  Forests, 
the  Mesas  of  the  Moki  and  Navajo  Land  lying  like 
a  wedge  between  these  two  belts. 

Then,  towards  midday,  your  trail  has  been  drop- 
ping so  gradually  that  you  hardly  realize  it  till  you 


ACROSS  THE  PAINTED  DESERT     131 

slither  down  a  sand  bank  and  find  yourself  between 
the  yellow  pumice  walls  of  a  blind  cul-de-sac  in  the 
rock — nooning  place  —  where  a  tiny  trickle  of 
pure  spring  water  pours  out  of  the  upper  angle  of 
rock,  forming  a  pool  in  a  natural  basin  of  stone. 
Here  cowboys  of  the  long-ago  days,  when  this  was 
a  no-man's-land,  have  fenced  the  waters  in  from 
pollution  and  painted  hands  of  blood  on  the  walls 
of  the  cave  roof  above  the  spring.  Wherever  you 
find  pools  in  the  Desert,  there  the  Desert  silence  is 
broken  by  life;  unbroken  range  ponies  trotting  back 
and  forward  for  a  drink,  blue  jays  and  bluebirds 
flashing  phantoms  in  the  sunlight,  the  wild  doves 
fluttering  in  flocks  and  sounding  their  mournful 
"  hoo-hoo-hoo." 

This  spring  is  about  half  of  the  fifty-five  miles 
between  Ganado  and  Ream's  Canon;  and  the  last 
half  of  the  trail  is  but  a  continuance  of  the  first: 
more  lilac-colored  mesas  high  above  the  top  of  the 
world,  with  the  encircling  peaks  like  the  edge  of  an 
inverted  bowl,  a  sky  above  blue  as  the  bluest  tur- 
quoise ;  then  the  cedared  lower  hills  redolent  of  ever- 
greens; a  drop  amid  the  pumice  rocks  of  the  lower 
world,  and  you  are  in  Keam's  Canon,  driving  along 
the  bank  of  an  arroyo  trenched  by  floods,  steep  as  a 
carved  wall.  You  pass  the  ruins  of  the  old  govern- 
ment school,  where  the  floods  drove  the  scholars  out, 
and  see  the  big  rock  commemorating  Kit  Carson's 
famous  fight  long  ago,  and  come  on  the  new  Indian 
schools  where  150  little  Navajos  and  Mokis  are  be- 
ing taught  by  Federal  appointees  —  schools  as  fine 


132     ACROSS  THE  PAINTED  DESERT 

in  every  respect  as  the  best  educational  institutions 
of  the  East.  At  the  Agency  Office  here  you  must 
obtain  a  permit  to  go  on  into  Mold  Land;  for  the 
Three  Mesas  and  Oraibi  and  Hotoville  are  the 
Ultima  Thule  of  the  trail  across  the  Painted  Desert. 
Here  you  find  tribes  completely  untouched  by  civili- 
zation and  as  hostile  to  it  (as  the  name  Hotoville 
signifies)  as  when  the  Spaniard  first  came  among 
them.  In  fact,  the  only  remnants  of  Spanish  influ- 
ence left  at  some  of  these  mesas  are  the  dwarfed 
peach  orchards  growing  in  the  arid  sands.  These 
were  planted  centuries  ago  by  the  Spanish  padres. 

The  trading  post  managed  by  Mr.  Lorenzo  Hub- 
bell,  Jr.,  at  Ream's  Canon  is  but  a  replica  of  his 
father's  establishment  at  Ganado.  Here  is  the  same 
fine  old  Spanish  hospitality.  Here,  too,  is  a  rare 
though  smaller  collection  of  Western  paintings. 
There  are  rugs  from  every  part  of  the  Navajo  Land, 
and  specimens  of  pottery  from  the  Three  Mesas  — 
especially  from  Nampaii,  the  wonderful  woman  pot- 
tery maker  of  the  First  Mesa  —  and  fine  silver-work 
gathered  from  the  Navajo  silversmiths.  And  with 
it  all  is  the  gracious  perfection  of  the  art  that  con- 
ceals art,  the  air  that  you  are  conferring  a  favor 
on  the  host  to  accept  rest  in  a  little  rose-covered 
bower  of  two  rooms  and  a  parlor  placed  at  the  com- 
mand of  guests. 

The  last  lap  of  the  drive  across  the  Painted  Des- 
ert is  by  all  odds  the  hardest  stretch  of  the  road,  as 
well  as  the  most  interesting.  It  is  here  the  Mokis, 
or  Hopi,  have  their  reservation  in  the  very  heart 


ACROSS  THE  PAINTED  DESERT     133 

of  Navajo  Land;  and  there  will  be  no  quarrel  over 
possession  of  this  land.  It  lies  a  sea  of  yellow  sand 
with  high  rampant  islands  —  600,  1,000,  1,500  feet 
above  the  plains  —  of  yellow  tufa  and  white  gypsum 
rock,  sides  as  sheer  as  a  wall,  the  top  a  flat  plateau 
but  for  the  crest  where  perch  the  Moki  villages.  Up 
the  narrow  acclivities  leading  to  these  mesa  crests  the 
Mokis  must  bring  all  provisions,  all  water,  their 
ponies  and  donkeys.  If  they  could  live  on  atmos- 
phere, on  views  of  a  painted  world  at  their  feet 
receding  to  the  very  drop  over  the  sky-line,  with 
tones  and  half-tones  and  subtle  suggestions  of  opaline 
snow  peaks  swimming  in  the  lilac  haze  hundreds  of 
miles  away,  you  would  not  wonder  at  their  choosing 
these  eerie  eagle  nests  for  their  cities;  for  the  color- 
ing below  is  as  gorgeous  and  brilliant  as  in  the  Grand 
Canon.  But  you  see  their  little  farm  patches  among 
the  sand  billows  below,  the  peach  trees  almost  up- 
rooted by  the  violence  of  the  wind,  literally  and 
truly,  a  stone  placed  where  the  corn  has  been  planted 
to  prevent  seed  and  plantlet  from  being  blown  away. 
Or  if  the  Navajo  still  raided  the  Moki,  you  could 
understand  them  toiling  like  beasts  of  burden  carry- 
ing water  up  to  these  hilltops;  but  the  day  of  raid 
and  foray  is  forever  past. 

It  was  on  our  way  back  over  this  trail  that  we 
learned  one  good  reason  why  the  dwellers  of  this 
land  must  keep  to  the  high  rock  crests.  Crossing 
the  high  mesa,  we  had  felt  the  wind  begin  to  blow, 
when  like  Drummond's  Habitant  Skipper,  "  it  blew 
and  then  it  blew  some  more."  By  the  time  we 


134    ACROSS  THE  PAINTED  DESERT 

reached  the  sandy  plain  below,  such  a  hurricane  had 
broken  as  I  have  seen  only  once  before,  and  that 
was  off  the  coast  of  Labrador,  when  for  six  hours 
we  could  not  see  the  sea  for  the  foam.  The  billows 
of  sand  literally  lifted.  You  could  not  see  the 
sandy  plain  for  a  dust  fine  as  flour  that  wiped  out 
every  landmark  three  feet  ahead  of  your  horses' 
noses.  The  wheels  sank  hub  deep  in  sand.  Of 
trail,  not  a  sign  was  left;  and  you  heard  the  same 
angry  roar  as  in  a  hurricane  at  sea.  But  like  the 
eternal  rocks,  dim  and  serene  and  high  above  the 
turmoil,  stood  the  First  Mesa  village  of  Moki  Land. 
Perhaps  after  all,  these  little  squat  Pueblo  Indians 
knew  what  they  were  doing  when  they  built  so  high 
above  the  dust  storms.  Twice  the  rear  wheels  lifted 
for  a  glorious  upset;  but  we  veered  and  tacked  and 
whipped  the  fagged  horses  on.  For  three  hours  the 
hurricane  lasted,  and  when  finally  it  sank  with  an 
angry  growl  and  we  came  out  of  the  fifteen  miles  of 
sand  into  sagebrush  and  looked  back,  the  rosy  tinge 
of  an  afterglow  lay  on  the  gray  pile  of  stone  where 
the  Moki  town  crests  the  top  of  the  lofty  mesa. 

In  justice  to  travelers  and  Desert  dwellers,  two 
or  three  facts  should  be  added.  Such  dust  storms 
occur  only  in  certain  spring  months.  So  much  in 
fairness  to  the  Painted  Desert.  Next,  I  have 
cursorily  given  slight  details  of  the  Desert  storm, 
because  I  don't  want  any  pleasure  .seekers  to  think 
the  Painted  Desert  can  be  crossed  with  the  comfort 
of  a  Pullman  car.  You  have  to  pay  for  your  fun. 
We  paid  in  that  blinding,  stinging,  smothering  blast 


ACROSS  THE  PAINTED  DESERT     135 

as  from  a  furnace,  from  three  to  half  past  five. 
Women  are  supposed  to  be  irrepressible  talkers. 
Well  —  we  came  to  the  point  where  not  a  soul  in 
the  carriage  could  utter  a  word  for  the  dust  Lastly, 
when  we  saw  that  the  storm  was  to  be  such  a  genuine 
old-timer,  we  ought  to  have  tied  wet  handkerchiefs 
across  our  mouths.  Glasses  we  had  to  keep  the  dust 
out  of  our  eyes;  but  that  dust  is  alkali,  and  it  took 
a  good  two  weeks'  sneezing  and  a  very  sore  throat 
to  get  rid  of  it. 

Of  the  Three  Mesas  and  Oraibi  and  Hotoville, 
space  forbids  details  except  that  they  are  higher  than 
the  village  at  Acoma.  Overlooking  the  Painted 
Desert  in  every  direction,  they  command  a  view  that 
beggars  all  description  and  almost  staggers  thought. 
You  seem  to  be  overlooking  Almighty  God's  own 
amphitheater  of  dazzlingly-colored  infinity;  and  nat- 
urally you  go  dumb  with  joy  of  the  beauty  of  it  and 
lose  your  own  personality  and  perspective  utterly. 
We  lunched  on  the  brink  of  a  white  precipice  1,500 
feet  above  anywhere,  and  saw  Moki  women  toiling 
up  that  declivity  with  urns  of  water  on  their  heads, 
and  photographed  naked  urchins  sunning  themselves 
on  the  baking  bare  rock,  and  stood  above  estufas, 
or  sacred  underground  council  chambers,  where  the 
Pueblos  held  their  religious  rites  before  the  coming 
of  the  Spaniards. 

Of  the  Moki  towns,  Oraibi  is,  perhaps,  cleaner 
and  better  than  the  Three  Mesas.  The  mesas  are  in- 
describably, unspeakably  filthy.  At  Oraibi,  you  can 
wander  through  adobe  houses  clean  as  your  own  home 


136     ACROSS  THE  PAINTED  DESERT 

quarters,  the  adobe  hard  as  cement,  the  rooms  di- 
vided into  sleeping  apartments,  cooking  room,  meal 
bin,  etc.  Also,  being  nearer  the  formation  of  the 
Grand  Canon,  the  coloring  surrounding  the  Mesa  is 
almost  as  gorgeous  as  the  Canon. 

If  it  had  not  been  that  the  season  was  verging  on 
the  summer  rains,  which  flood  the  Little  Colorado, 
we  should  have  gone  on  from  Oraibi  to  the  Grand 
Canon.  But  the  Little  Colorado  is  full  of  quicksands, 
dangerous  to  a  span  of  a  generous  host's  horses; 
so  we  came  back  the  way  we  had  entered.  As  we 
drove  down  the  winding  trail  that  corkscrews  from 
Oraibi  to  the  sand  plain,  a  group  of  Moki  women 
came  running  down  the  footpath  and  met  us  just  as 
we  were  turning  our  backs  on  the  Mesa. 

"  We  love  you,"  exclaimed  an  old  woman  extend- 
ing her  hand  (the  Government  doctor  interpreted 
for  us),  "  we  love  you  with  all  our  hearts  and  have 
come  down  to  wish  you  a  good-by." 


CHAPTER  VIII 

THE   GRAND    CANON   AND   PETRIFIED    FORESTS 

THE  belt  of  National  Forests  west  of  the 
Painted  Desert  and  Navajo  Land  comprises 
that  strange  area  of  onyx  and  agate  known 
as  the  Petrified  Forests,  the  upland  pine  parks  of  the 
Francisco  Mountains  round  Flagstaff,  the  vast  ter- 
ritory of  the  Grand  Canon,  and  the  western  slope  be- 
tween the  Continental  Divide  and  the  Pacific. 

Needless  to  say,  it  takes  a  great  deal  longer  to 
see  these  forests  than  to  write  about  them.  You 
could  spend  a  good  two  weeks  in  each  area,  and  then 
come  away  conscious  that  you  had  seen  only  the  begin- 
nings of  the  wonders  in  each.  For  instance,  the 
Petrified  Forests  cover  an  area  of  2,000  acres  that 
could  keep  you  busy  for  a  week.  Then,  when  you 
think  you  have  seen  everything,  you  learn  of  some 
hieroglyphic  inscriptions  on  a  nearby  rock,  with  let- 
tering which  no  scientist  has  yet  deciphered,  but  with 
pictographs  resembling  the  ancient  Phoenician  signs 
from  which  our  own  alphabet  is  supposed  to  be  de- 
rived. Also,  after  you  have  viewed  the  canons  and 
upland  pine  parks  and  snowy  peaks  and  cliff  dwell- 
ings round  Flagstaff  and  have  recovered  from  the 
surprise  of  learning  there  are  upland  pine  parks  and 
snowy  peaks  twelve  to  fourteen  thousand  feet  high 

137 


i38  THE  GRAND  CA^ON 

in  the  Desert,  you  may  strike  south  and  see  the 
Aztec  ruins  of  Montezuma's  Castle  and  Monte- 
zuma's  Well,  or  go  yet  farther  afield  to  the  Great 
Natural  Bridge  of  Southern  Arizona,  or  explore  near 
Winslow  a  great  crater-like  cavity  supposed  to  mark 
the  sinking  of  some  huge  meteorite. 

Of  the  Grand  Canon  little  need  be  said  here;  not 
because  there  is  nothing  to  say,  but  because  all  the 
superlatives  you  can  pile  on,  all  the  scientific 
explanations  you  can  give,  are  so  utterly  inadequate. 
You  can  count  on  one  hand  the  number  of  men  who 
have  explored  the  whole  length  of  the  Grand  Canon 
—  200  miles  —  and  hundreds  of  the  lesser  canons 
that  strike  off  sidewise  from  Grand  Canon  are  still 
unexplored  and  unexploited.  Then,  when  you  cross 
the  Continental  Divide  and  come  on  down  to  the 
Angeles  Forests  in  from  Los  Angeles,  and  the  Cleve- 
land in  from  San  Diego,  you  are  in  a  poor-man's 
paradise  so  far  as  a  camp  holiday  is  concerned.  For 
$3  a  week  you  are  supplied  with  tent,  camp  kit  and 
all.  If  there  are  two  of  you,  $6  a  week  will  cover 
your  holiday;  and  forty  cents  by  electric  car  takes 
you  out  to  your  stamping  ground.  An  average  of 
200  people  a  month  go  out  to  one  or  other  of  the 
Petrified  Forests.  From  Flagstaff,  100  people  a 
month  go  in  to  see  the  cliff  dwellings.  Not  less 
,tfian  30,000  people  a  year  visit  the  Grand  Canon 
*nd  100,000  people  yearly  camp  and  holiday  in  the 
Angeles  and  Cleveland  Forests.  And  we  are  but 
at  the  beginning  of  the  discovery  of  our  own  Western 
Wonderland.  Who  shall  say  that  the  National 


THE  GRAND  CANON  139 

Forests  are  not  the  People's  Playground  of  all 
America;  that  they  do  not  belong  to  the  East  as 
much  as  to  the  West;  that  East  and  West  are  not 
alike  concerned  in  maintaining  and  protecting  them? 

You  strike  into  the  Petrified  Forests  from  Adam- 
ana  or  Holbrook.  Adamana  admits  you  to  one  sec- 
tion of  the  petrified  area,  Holbrook  to  another  — 
both  equally  marvelous  and  easily  accessible.  If 
you  go  out  in  a  big  tally-ho  with  several  others  in 
the  rig,  the  charge  will  be  from  $1.50  to  $2.50.  If 
you  hire  a  driver  and  fast  team  for  yourself,  the 
charge  will  be  from  $4  to  $6.  Both  places  have 
hotels,  their  charges  varying  from  $i  and  $1.50  in 
Holbrook,  to  $2  and  $2.50  at  Adamana.  The  hotel 
puts  up  your  luncheon  and  water  keg,  and  the  trips 
can  be  made,  with  the  greatest  ease  in  a  day. 

Don't  go  to  the  Petrified  Forests  expecting  thrills 
of  the  big  knock-you-down  variety!  To  go  from 
the  spacious  glories  of  the  boundless  Painted  Desert 
to  the  little  2,ooo-acre  area  of  the  Petrified  Forests 
is  like  passing  from  a  big  Turner  or  Watts  canvas  in 
the  Tate  Gallery,  London,  to  a  tiny  study  in  blue 
mist  and  stars  by  Whistler.  If  you  go  looking  for 
"big"  things  you'll  come  away  disappointed;  but 
if  like  Tennyson  and  Bobby  Burns  and  Words- 
worth, "  the  flower  in  the  crannied  wall  "  has  as 
much  beauty  for  you  as  the  ocean  or  a  mountain, 
you'll  come  away  touched  with  the  mystery  of  that 
Southwestern  Wonderland  quite  as  much  as  if  you 
had  come  out  of  all  the  riotous  intoxication  of  color 
in  the  Painted  Desert. 


I4o  THE  GRAND  CANON 

In  fact,  you  drive  across  the  southern  rim  of  the 
Painted  Desert  to  reach  the  Petrified  Forests.  You 
are  crossing  the  aromatic,  sagey-smelling  dry  plain 
pink  with  a  sort  of  morning  primrose  light,  when 
you  come  abruptly  into  broken  country.  A  sandy 
arroyo  trenches  and  cuts  the  plain  here.  A  gravelly- 
hillock  hunches  up  there;  and  just  when  you  are  hav- 
ing an  eye  to  the  rear  wheel  brake,  or  glancing  back 
to  see  whether  the  fat  man  is  on  the  up  or  down 
side,  your  eye  is  caught  by  spangles  of  rainbow  light 
on  the  ground,  by  huge  blood-colored  rocks  the 
shape  of  a  fallen  tree  with  encrusted  stone  bark  on 
the  outside  and  wedges  and  slabs  and  pillars  of  pure 
onyx  and  agate  in  the  middle.  Somehow  you  think 
of  that  Navajo  legend  of  the  coyote  spilling  the  stars 
on  the  face  of  the  sky,  and  you  wonder  what  marvel- 
maker  among  the  gods  of  medicine-men  spilled  his 
huge  bag  of  precious  stone  all  over  the  gravel  in 
this  fashion.  Then  someone  cries  out,  "  Why,  look, 
that's  a  tree !  "  and  the  tally-ho  spills  its  occupants 
out  helter-skelter;  and  someone  steps  off  a  long 
blood-red,  bark-incrusted  column  hidden  at  both  ends 
in  the  sand,  and  shouts  out  that  the  visible  part  of 
the  recumbent  trunk  is  130  feet  long.  There  was 
a  scientist  along  with  us  the  day  we  went  out,  a  man 
from  Belgium  in  charge  of  the  rare  forests  of  Java; 
and  he  declared  without  hesitation  that  many  of  these 
prone,  pillared  giants  must  be  sequoias  of  the  same 
ancient  family  as  California's  groves  of  big  trees. 
Think  what  that  means!  These  petrified  trees  lie 
so  deeply  buried  in  the  sand  that  only  treetops  and 


THE  GRAND  CANON  141 

sections  of  the  trunks  and  broken  bits  of  small  upper 
branches  are  visible.  Practically  no  excavation  has 
taken  place  beneath  these  hillocks  of  gravel  and  sand. 
The  depth  and  extent  of  the  forest  below  this  ancient 
ocean  bed  are  unknown.  Only  water  —  oceans  and 
aeons  of  water  —  could  have  rolled  and  swept  and 
piled  up  these  sand  hills.  Before  the  Desert  was  an 
ancient  sea ;  and  before  the  sea  was  an  ancient  sequoia 
forest;  and  it  takes  a  sequoia  from  six  to  ten  thou- 
sand years  to  come  to  its  full  growth;  and  that  about 
gets  you  back  to  the  Ancient  of  Days  busy  in  his 
Workshop  making  Man  out  of  mud,  and  Earth  out 
of  Chaos. 

But  there  is  another  side  to  the  Petrified  Forests 
besides  a  prehistoric,  geologic  one.  Split  one  of  the 
big  or  little  pieces  of  petrified  wood  open,  and  you 
find  pure  onyx,  pure  agate,  the  colors  of  the  rainbow, 
which  every  youngster  has  tried  to  catch  in  its  hands, 
caught  by  a  Master  Hand  and  transfixed  forever  in 
the  eternal  rocks.  Crosswise,  the  split  shows  the 
concentric  circles  of  the  wood  grain  in  blues  and 
purples  and  reds  and  carmines  and  golds  and  lilacs 
and  primrose  pinks.  Split  the  stone  longitudinally 
and  you  have  the  same  colors  in  water-waves  bril- 
liant as  a  diamond,  hard  as  a  diamond,  so  hard  you 
can  only  break  it  along  the  grain  of  the  ancient  wood, 
so  hard,  fortunately,  that  it  almost  defies  man-ma- 
chinery for  a  polish.  This  hardness  has  been  a 
blessing  in  disguise ;  for  before  the  Petrified  Forests 
were  made  by  Act  of  Congress  a  National  Park,  or 
Monument,  the  petrified  wood  was  exploited  com- 


i42  THE  GRAND  CANON 

mercially  and  shipped  away  in  carloads  to  be  pol- 
ished. You  can  see  some  shafts  of  the  polished 
specimens  in  any  of  the  big  Eastern  museums;  but 
it  was  found  that  the  petrified  wood  required  ma- 
chinery as  expensive  and  fine  as  for  diamonds  to 
effect  a  hard  polish,  and  the  thing  was  not  com- 
mercially possible ;  so  the  Petrified  Forests  will  never 
be  vandalized. 

You  lunch  under  a  natural  bridge  formed  by  the 
huge  shaft  of  a  prone  giant,  and  step  off  more  fallen 
pillars  to  find  lengths  greater  than  130  feet,  and 
seat  yourself  on  stump  ends  of  a  rare  enough  beauty 
for  an  emperor's  throne;  but  always  you  come  back 
to  the  first  pleasures  of  a  child  —  picking  up  the 
smaller  pebbles,  each  pebble  as  if  there  had  been 
a  sun  shower  of  rainbow  drops  and  each  drop  had 
crystallized  into  colored  diamonds. 

I  said  don't  go  to  the  Petrified  Forests  expecting 
a  big  thrill.  Yet  if  you  have  eyes  that  really  see, 
and  go  there  after  a  rain  when  every  single  bit  of 
rock  is  ashine  with  the  colors  of  broken  rainbows; 
or  go  there  at  high  noon,  when  every  color  strikes 
back  in  spangles  of  light  —  there  is  something  the 
matter  with  you  if  you  don't  have  a  big  thrill  with 
a  capital  "  B." 

There  is  another  pleasure  on  your  trip  to  the 
Petrified  Forests,  which  you  will  get  if  you  know 
how,  but  completely  miss  if  you  don't.  All  these 
drivers  to  the  Forests  are  old-timers  of  the  days 
when  Arizona  was  a  No-Man's-Land.  For  instance, 
Al  Stevenson,  the  custodian  at  Adamana,  was  one  of 


THE  GRAND  CANON  143 

the  men  along  with  Commodore  Owen  of  San  Diego 
and  Bert  Potter  of  the  Forestry  Department,  Wash- 
ington, who  rescued  Sheriff  Woods  of  Holbrook 
from  a  lynching  party  in  the  old  sheep  and  cattle 
war  days.  Stevenson  can  tell  that  story  as  few  men 
know  it;  and  dozens  of  others  he  can  tell  of  the 
old,  wild,  pioneer  days  when  a  man  had  to  be  all 
man  and  fearless  to  his  trigger  tips,  or  cash  in,  and 
cash  in  quick.  At  Holbrook  you  can  get  the  story 
of  the  Show-Low  Ranch  and  all  the  $50,000  worth 
of  stock  won  in  a  cut  of  cards ;  or  of  how  they  hanged 
Stott  and  Scott  and  Wilson  —  mere  boys,  two  of 
them  in  Tonto  Basin,  for  horses  which  they  didn't 
steal.  All  through  this  Painted  Desert  you  are  just 
on  the  other  side  of  a  veil  from  the  Land  of  True 
Romance;  but  you'll  not  lift  that  veil,  believe  me, 
with  a  patronizing  Eastern  question.  You'll  find 
your  way  in,  if  you  know  how;  and  if  you  don't 
know  how,  no  man  can  teach  you.  And  at  Adamana, 
don't  forget  to  see  the  pictograph  rocks.  Then 
you'll  appreciate  why  the  scientists  wonder  whether 
the  antiquity  of  the  Orient  is  old  as  the  antiquity  of 
our  own  America. 

Flagstaff,  frankly,  does  not  live  up  to  its  own  op- 
portunities. It  is  the  gateway  to  many  Aztec  ruins 
—  much  more  easily  accessible  to  the  public  than  the 
Frijoles  cave  dwellings  of  New  Mexico.  Only  nine 
miles  out  by  easy  trail  are  cliff  dwellings  in  Walnut 
Canon.  These  differ  from  the  Frijoles  in  not  being 
caves.  The  ancient  people  have  simply  taken  ad- 
vantage of  natural  arches  high  in  the  face  of  unseal- 


144  THE  GRAND  CANON 

able  precipices  and  have  bricked  up  the  faces  of 
these  with  adobe.  As  far  as  I  know,  not  so  much 
as  the  turn  of  a  spade  has  ever  been  attempted  in 
excavation.  The  debris  of  centuries  lies  on  the 
floors  of  the  houses;  and  the  adobe  brick  in  front 
is  gradually  crumbling  and  rolling  down  the  preci- 
pice into  Walnut  Canon.  Nor  is  there  any  doubt 
but  that  slight  excavation  would  yield  discoveries. 
You  find  bits  of  pottery  and  shard  in  the  debris  piles ; 
and  the  day  we  went  out,  five  minutes'  scratching 
over  of  one  cliff  floor  unearthed  bits  of  wampum 
shell  that  from  the  perforations  had  evidently  been 
used  as  a  necklace.  The  Forestry  Service  has  a 
man  stationed  here  to  guard  the  old  ruins;  but  the 
Government  might  easily  go  a  step  further  and  give 
him  authority  to  attempt  some  slight  restoration. 
You  drive  across  a  cinder  plain  from  Flagstaff  and 
suddenly  drop  down  to  a  footpath  that  takes  you  to 
the  brink  of  circling  gray  stone  canons  many  hun- 
dreds of  feet  deep.  Along  the  top  ledges  of  these 
amid  such  rocks  as  mountain  sheep  might  frequent 
are  the  cliff  houses  —  hundreds  and  hundreds  of 
them,  which  no  one  has  yet  explored.  At  the  bot- 
tom of  the  lonely,  silent,  dark  canon  was  evidently 
once  a  stream;  but  no  stream  has  flowed  here  in  the 
memory  of  the  white  race;  and  the  cliff  houses  give 
evidence  of  even  greater  age  than  the  caves. 

Only  forty-seven  miles  south  of  Flagstaff  are 
Montezuma's  Castle  and  Well.  Drivers  can  be 
hired  in  Flagstaff  to  take  you  out  at  from  $4  to  $6 
a  day;  and  there  are  ranch  houses  near  the  Castle 


THE  GRAND  CANON  145 

and  the  Well,  where  you  can  stay  at  very  trifling 
cost,  indeed. 

It  comes  as  a  surprise  to  see  here  at  Flagstaff, 
wedged  between  the  Painted  Desert  and  the  arid 
plains  of  the  South,  the  snow-capped  peaks  of  the 
Francisco  Mountains  ranging  from  12,000  to  13,- 
ooo  feet  high,  an  easy  climb  to  the  novice.  Only 
twenty  miles  out  at  Oak  Creek  is  one  of  the  best 
trout  brooks  of  the  Southwest;  and  twenty-five  miles 
out  is  a  ranch  house  in  a  cool  canon  where  health 
and  holiday  seekers  can  stay  all  the  year  in  the  Verde 
Valley.  It  is  from  East  Verde  that  you  go  to  the 
Natural  Bridge.  The  central  span  of  this  bridge 
is  100  feet  from  the  creek  bottom,  and  the  creek 
itself  deposits  lime  so  rapidly  that  if  you  drop  a 
stone  or  a  hat  down,  it  at  once  encrusts  and  petrifies. 
Also  at  Flagstaff  is  the  famous  Lowell  Observatory. 
In  fact,  if  Flagstaff  lived  up  to  its  opportunities,  if 
there  were  guides,  cheap  tally-hos  and  camp  out- 
fitters on  the  spot,  it  could  as  easily  have  10,000 
tourists  a  month  as  it  now  has  between  100  and  200. 

When  you  reach  the  Grand  Canon,  you  have  come 
to  the  uttermost  wonder  of  the  Southwestern  Won- 
der World.  There  is  nothing  else  like  it  in  America. 
There  is  nothing  else  remotely  resembling  it  in  the 
known  world;  and  no  one  has  yet  been  heard  of  who 
has  come  to  the  Grand  Canon  and  gone  away  disap- 
pointed. If  the  Grand  Canon  were  in  Egypt  or  the 
Alps,  it  is  safe  to  wager  it  would  be  visited  by  every 
one  of  the  300,000  Americans  who  yearly  throng 


146  THE  GRAND  CANON 

Continental  resorts.  As  it  is,  only  30,000  people 
a  year  visit  it;  and  a  large  proportion  of  them  are 
foreigners. 

You  can  do  the  Canon  cheaply,  or  you  can  do 
it  extravagantly.  You  can  go  to  it  by  driving  across 
the  Painted  Desert,  200  miles;  or  motoring  in  from 
Flagstaff  —  a  half-day  trip ;  or  by  train  from  Wil- 
liams, return  ticket  something  more  than  $5.  Or 
you  can  take  your  own  pack  horses,  and  ride  in  your- 
self; or  you  can  employ  one  of  the  well  known  local 
trail  makers  and  guides,  like  John  Bass,  and  go  off 
up  the  Canon  on  a  camping  trip  of  weeks  or  months. 

Once  you  reach  the  rim  of  the  Canon,  you  can 
camp  under  your  own  tent  roof  and  cater  your  own 
meals.  Or  you  may  go  to  the  big  hotel  and  pay  $4 
to  $15  a  day.  Or  you  may  get  tent  quarters  at  the 
Bright  Angel  Camp  —  $i  a  day,  and  whatever  you 
pay  for  your  meals.  Or  you  may  join  one  of  John 
Bass'  Camps  which  will  cost  from  $4  up,  according 
to  the  number  of  horses  and  the  size  of  your  party. 

First  of  all,  understand  what  the  Grand  Canon  is, 
and  what  it  isn't.  We  ordinarily  think  of  a  canon 
as  a  narrow  cleft  or  trench  in  the  rocks,  seldom  more 
than  a  few  hundred  feet  deep  and  wide,  and  very  sel- 
dom more  than  a  few  miles  long.  The  Grand  Canon 
is  nearly  as  long  as  from  New  York  to  Canada,  as 
wide  as  the  city  of  New  York  is  long,  and  as  deep 
straight  as  a  plummet  as  the  Canadian  Rockies  or 
lesser  Alps  are  high.  In  other  words,  it  is  217 
miles  long,  from  thirteen  to  twenty  wide,  and  has  a 
straight  drop  a  mile  deep,  or  seven  miles  as  the  trail 


THE  GRAND  CANON  147 

zigzags  down.  You  think  of  a  canon  as  a  great 
trench  between  mountains.  This  one  is  a  colossal 
trench  with  side  canons  going  off  laterally  its  full 
length,  dozens  of  them  to  each  mile,  like  ribs  along 
a  backbone.  Ordinarily,  to  climb  a  7,000  foot 
mountain,  you  have  to  go  up.  At  the  Grand  Canon, 
you  come  to  the  brink  of  the  sagebrush  plain  and 
jump  off  —  to  climb  these  peaks.  Peak  after  peak, 
you  lose  count  of  them  in  the  mist  of  primrose  fire 
and  lilac  light  and  purpling  shadows.  To  climb 
these  peaks,  you  go  down,  down  7,000  feet  a  good 
deal  steeper  than  the  ordinary  stair  and  in  places 
quite  as  steep  as  the  Metropolitan  Tower  elevator. 
In  fact,  if  the  Metropolitan  Tower  and  the  Singer 
Building  and  the  Flatiron  and  Washington's  Shaft 
in  the  Capital  City  were  piled  one  on  top  of  an- 
other in  a  pinnacled  pyramid,  they  would  barely 
reach  up  one-seventh  of  the  height  of  these  massive 
peaks  swimming  in  countless  numbers  in  the  color 
of  the  Canon. 

So  much  for  dimensions !  Now  as  to  time.  If  you 
have  only  one  day,  you  can  dive  in  by  train  in  the 
morning  and  out  by  night,  and  between  times  go  to 
Sunrise  Point  or — if  you  are  a  robust  walker — - 
down  Bright  Angel  Trail  to  the  bank  of  the  Colo- 
rado River,  seven  miles.  If  you  have  two  days 
at  your  disposal,  you  can  drive  out  to  Grand  View 
—  fourteen  miles  —  and  overlook  the  panorama  of 
the  Canon  twenty  miles  in  all  directions.  If  you 
have  more  days  yet  at  your  disposal,  there  are  good 
trips  on  wild  trails  to  Dripping  Springs  and  to  Ger- 


148  THE  GRAND  CANON 

trude  Point  and  to  Cataract  Canon  and  by  aerial 
tram  across  the  Colorado  River  to  the  Kaibab  Pla- 
teau on  the  other  side.  In  fact,  if  you  stayed  at  the 
Grand  Canon  a  year  and  were  not  afraid  of  trail- 
less  trips,  you  could  find  a  new  view,  a  new  wonder 
place,  new  stamping  grounds  each  day.  Remember 
that  the  Canon  itself  is  217  miles  long;  and  it  has 
lateral  canons  uncounted. 

When  you  reach  El  Tovar  you  are  told  two  of 
the  first  things  to  do  are  take  the  drives  —  three 
miles  each  way  —  to  Sunrise  and  to  Sunset  Points. 
Don't!  Save  your  dollars,  and  walk  them  both. 
By  carriage,  the  way  leads  through  the  pine  woods 
back  from  the  rim  for  three  miles  to  each  point 
By  walking,  you  can  keep  on  an  excellent  trail  close 
to  the  rim  and  do  each  in  twenty  minutes;  for  the 
foot  trails  are  barely  a  mile  long.  Also  by  walk- 
ing, you  can  escape  the  loud-mouthed,  bull-voiced 
tourist  who  bawls  out  his  own  shallow  knowledge  of 
erosion  to  the  whole  carriageful  just  at  the  moment 
you  want  to  float  away  in  fancy  amid  opal  lights 
and  upper  heights  where  the  Olympic  and  Hindoo 
and  Norse  gods  took  refuge  when  unbelief  drove 
them  from  their  old  resorts.  In  fact,  if  you  keep 
looking  long  enough  through  that  lilac  fire  above 
seas  of  primrose  mists,  you  can  almost  fancy  those 
hoary  old  gods  of  Beauty  and  Power  floating  round 
angles  of  the  massive  lower  mountains,  shifting  the 
scenes  and  beckoning  one  another  from  the  wings 
of  this  huge  amphitheater.  The  space-filling  talker 
is  still  bawling  out  about  "  the  mighty  powers  of 


THE  GRAND  CANON  149 

erosion  " ;  and  a  thin-faced  curate  is  putting  away  a 
figure  of  speech  about  "  Almighty  Power  "  for  his 
next  sermon.  Personally,  I  prefer  the  old  pagan 
way  of  expressing  these  things  in  the  short  cut  of  a 
personifying  god  who  did  a  smashing  big  business 
with  the  hammer  of  Thor,  or  the  sea  horses  of  Nep- 
tune or  the  forked  lightnings  of  old  loud-thundering 
Jove. 

You  can  walk  down  Bright  Angel  Trail  to  the 
river  at  the  bottom  of  the  Canon;  but  unless  your 
legs  have  a  pair  of  very  good  benders  under  the 
knees,  you'll  not  be  able  to  walk  up  that  trail  the 
same  day,  for  the  way  down  is  steep  as  a  stair  and 
the  distance  is  seven  miles.  In  that  case,  better 
spend  the  night  at  the  camp  known  as  the  Indian 
Gardens  half-way  down  in  a  beautifully  watered 
dell ;  or  else  have  the  regular  daily  party  bring  down 
the  mules  for  you  to  the  river.  Or  you  can  join 
the  regular  tourist  party  both  going  down  and  com- 
ing up.  Mainly  because  we  wanted  to  see  the 
sunrise,  but  also  because  a  big  party  on  a  narrow 
trail  is  always  unsafe  and  a  gabbling  crowd  on  a 
beautiful  trail  is  always  agony,  two  of  us  rose  at 
four  A.  M.  and  walked  down  the  trail  during  sunrise, 
leaving  orders  for  a  special  guide  to  fetch  mules 
down  for  us  to  the  river.  Space  forbids  details  of 
the  tramp,  except  to  say  it  was  worth  the  effort, 
twice  over  worth  the  effort  in  spite  of  knees  that  sent 
up  pangs  and  protests  for  a  week. 

It  had  rained  heavily  all  night  and  the  path  was 
very  slippery;  but  if  rain  brings  out  the  colors  of 


150  THE  GRAND  CANON 

the  Petrified  Forests,  you  can  imagine  what  it  does 
to  sunrise  in  a  sea  of  blood-red  mountain  peaks. 
Much  of  the  trail  is  at  an  angle  of  forty-five  de- 
grees; but  it  is  wide  and  well  shored  up  at  the  outer 
edge.  The  foliage  lining  the  trail  was  dripping 
wet;  and  the  sunlight  struck  back  from  each  leaf  in 
spangles  of  gold.  An  incense  as  of  morning  wor- 
ship filled  the  air  with  the  odor  of  cedars  and  cloves 
and  wild  nutmeg  pinks  and  yucca  bloom.  There 
are  many  more  birds  below  the  Canon  rim  than 
above  it;  and  the  dawn  was  filled  with  snatches  of 
song  from  bluebirds  and  yellow  finches  and  water 
ousels,  whose  notes  were  like  the  tinkle  of  pure 
water.  What  looked  like  a  tiny  red  hillock  from  the 
rim  above  is  now  seen  to  be  a  mighty  mountain, 
four,  five,  seven  thousand  feet  from  river  to  peak, 
with  walls  smooth  as  if  planed  by  the  Artificer  of  all 
Eternity.  In  any  other  place,  the  gorges  between 
these  peaks  would  be  dignified  by  the  names  of 
canons.  Here,  they  are  mere  wings  to  the  main 
stage  setting  of  the  Grand  Canon.  We  reached  the 
Indian  Garden's  Camp  in  time  for  breakfast  and 
rested  an  hour  before  going  on  down  to  the  river. 
The  trail  followed  a  gentle  descent  over  sand-hills 
and  rocky  plateaus  at  first,  then  suddenly  it  began 
to  drop  sheer  in  the  section  known  as  the  Devil's 
Corkscrew.  The  heat  became  sizzling  as  you  de- 
scended; but  the  grandeur  grew  more  imposing  from 
the  stupendous  height  and  sheer  sides  of  the  bril- 
liantly colored  gorges  and  masses  of  shadows  above. 
Then  the  Devil's  Corkscrew  fell  into  a  sandy  dell 


THE  GRAND  CANON  151 

where  a  tiny  waterfall  trickled  with  the  sound  of 
the  voice  of  many  waters  in  the  great  silence.  A 
cloudburst  would  fill  this  gorge  in  about  a  jiffy;  but 
a  cloudburst  is  the  last  thing  on  earth  you  need 
expect  in  this  land  of  scant  showers  and  no  water. 
Suddenly,  you  turn  a  rock  angle,  and  the  yellow, 
muddy,  turbulent  flood  of  the  Colorado  swirls  past 
you,  tempestuous,  noisy,  sullen  and  dark,  filling  the 
narrow  canon  with  the  war  of  rock  against  water. 
What  seemed  to  be  mere  foothills  far  above,  now 
appear  colossal  peaks  sheer  up  and  down,  penning 
the  angry  river  between  black  walls.  It  was  no 
longer  hot.  We  could  hear  a  thunder  shower  re- 
verberating back  in  some  of  the  valleys  of  the 
Canon;  and  the  rain  falling  between  us  and  the  red 
rocks  was  as  a  curtain  to  the  scene  shifting  of  those 
old  earth  and  mountain  and  water  gods  hiding  in 
the  wings  of  the  vast  amphitheater. 

And  if  you  want  a  wilder,  more  eery  trail  than 
down  Bright  Angel,  go  from  Dripping  Springs  out 
to  Gertrude  Point.  I  know  a  great  many  wild 
mountain  trails  in  the  Rockies,  North  and  South; 
but  I  have  never  known  one  that  will  give  more 
thrills  from  its  sheer  beauty  and  sheer  daring.  You 
go  out  round  the  ledges  of  precipice  after  precipice, 
where  nothing  holds  you  back  from  a  fall  7,000 
feet  straight  as  a  stone  could  drop,  nothing  but  the 
sure-footedness  of  your  horse;  out  and  out,  round 
and  round  peak  after  peak,  till  you  are  on  the  tip 
top  and  outer  edge  of  one  of  the  highest  mountains 
in  the  Canon.  This  is  the  trail  of  old  Louis 


152  THE  GRAND  CANON 

Boucher,  one  of  the  beauty-loving  souls  who  first 
found  his  way  into  the  center  of  the  Canon  and  built 
his  own  trail  to  one  of  its  grandest  haunts.  Louis 
used  to  live  under  the  arch  formed  by  the  Dripping 
Springs;  but  Louis  has  long  since  left,  and  the  trail 
is  falling  away  and  is  now  one  for  a  horse  that  can 
walk  on  air  and  a  head  that  doesn't  feel  the  sensa- 
tions of  champagne  when  looking  down  a  straight 
7,000  feet  into  darkness.  If  you  like  that  kind  of 
a  trail,  take  the  trip;  for  it  is  the  best  and  wildest 
view  of  the  Canon;  but  take  two  days  to  it,  and 
sleep  at  Louis'  deserted  camp  under  the  Dripping 
Springs.  Yet  if  you  don't  like  a  trail  where  you 
wonder  if  you  remembered  to  make  your  will  and 
what  would  happen  if  the  gravel  slipped  from  your 
horse's  feet  one  of  these  places  where  the  next  turn 
seems  to  jump  off  into  atmosphere,  then  wait;  for 
the  day  must  surely  come  when  all  of  the  Grand 
Canon's  217  miles  will  be  made  as  easily  and  safely 
accessible  to  the  American  public  as  Egypt. 


CHAPTER  IX 
THE  GOVERNOR'S  PALACE  OF  SANTA  FE 

IT  lies  to  the  left  of  the  city  Plaza — a  long,  low, 
one-story  building  flanking  the  whole  length  of 
one  side  of  the  Plaza,  with  big  yellow  pine 
pillars  supporting  the  arcade  above  the  public  walk, 
each  pillar  surmounted  by  the  fluted  architrave  pe- 
culiar to  Spanish-Moorish  architecture.  It  is  yellow 
adobe  in  the  sunlight  —  very  old,  very  sleepy,  very 
remote  from  latter-day  life,  the  most  un-American 
thing  in  all  America,  the  only  governor's  palace 
from  Athabasca  to  the  Gulf  of  Mexico,  from  Sitka 
to  St.  Lawrence,  that  exists  to-day  precisely  as  it 
existed  one  hundred  years  ago,  two  hundred  years 
ago,  three  hundred  years  ago,  four  hundred  years 
ago  —  back,  back  beyond  that  to  the  days  when 
there  were  no  white  men  in  America.  Uncover  the 
outer  plaster  in  the  six-foot  thickness  of  the  walls 
in  the  Governor's  Palace  of  Santa  Fe,  and  what  do 
you  find?  Solid  adobe  and  brick?  Not  much! 
The  walled-up,  conical  fireplaces  and  meal  bins  and 
corn  caves  of  a  pueblo  people  who  lived  on  the  site 
of  modern  Santa  Fe  hundreds  of  years  before  the 
Spanish  founded  this  capital  here  in  1605.  For 
years  it  has  been  a  dispute  among  historians  — 
Bandelier,  Hodge,  Twitchell,  Governor  Prince,  Mr. 

153 


154        THE  GOVERNOR'S  PALACE 

Reed  —  whether  any  prehistoric  race  dwelt  where 
Santa  Fe  now  stands.  Only  in  the  summer  of  1912, 
when  it  was  necessary  to  replace  some  old  beams  and 
cut  some  arches  through  the  six-foot  walls  was  it 
discovered  that  the  huge  partitions  covered  in  their 
centers  walls  antedating  the  coming  of  the  Span- 
iards —  walls  with  the  little  conical  fireplaces  of  In- 
dian pueblos,  with  such  meal  bins  and  corn  shelves 
as  you  find  in  the  prehistoric  cave  dwellings. 

We  have  such  a  passion  for  destroying  the  old 
and  replacing  it  with  the  new  in  America  that  you 
can  scarcely  place  your  hand  on  a  structure  in  the 
New  World  that  stands  intact  as  it  was  before 
the  Revolution.  We  somehow  or  other  take  it  for 
granted  that  these  mute  witnesses  of  ancient  heroism 
have  nothing  to  teach  us  with  their  mossed  walls 
and  low-beamed  ceilings  and  dumb,  majestic  dignity. 

To  this,  the  Governor's  Palace  of  Santa  Fe  is  the 
one  and  complete  exception  in  America.  It  flanks 
the  cottonwoods  of  the  Plaza,  yellow  adobe  in  the 
sunlight  —  very  old,  very  sleepy,  very  remote  from 
latter-day  life,  but  with  a  quaint,  quiet  atmosphere 
that  travelers  scour  Europe  to  find.  Look  up  to 
the  vigas,  or  beams  of  the  ceiling,  yellowed  and 
browned  and  mellowed  with  age.  Those  vigas 
have  witnessed  strange  figures  stalking  the  spacious 
halls  below.  If  the  ceiling  beams  could  throw  their 
memories  on  some  moving  picture  screen,  there 
would  be  such  a  panorama  of  varied  personages  as 
no  other  palace  in  the  world  has  witnessed.  Leave 
out  the  hackneyed  tale  of  General  Lew  Wallace 


THE  GOVERNOR'S  PALACE         155 

writing  "  Ben  Hur  "  in  a  back  room  of  the  Palace; 
or  the  fact  that  three  different  flags  flung  their  folds 
over  old  Santa  Fe  in  a  single  century.  He  who 
knows  anything  at  all  about  Santa  Fe,  knows  that 
Spanish  power  gave  place  to  Mexican,  and  the  Mex- 
ican regime  to  American  rule.  Also,  that  General 
Lew  Wallace  wrote  "  Ben  Hur  "  in  a  back  room  of 
the  Palace,  while  he  was  governor  of  New  Mexico. 
And  you  only  have  to  use  your  eyes  to  know  that 
Santa  Fe,  itself,  is  a  bit  of  old  Spain  set  down  in 
the  modern  United  States  of  America.  The  don- 
keys trotting  to  market  under  loads  of  wood,  the 
ragged  peon  riders  bestriding  burros  no  higher  than 
a  saw  horse,  the  natives  stalking  past  in  bright 
scrape  or  blanket,  moccasined  and  hatless  —  all 
tell  you  that  you  are  in  a  region  remote  from  latter- 
day  America. 

But  here  is  another  sort  of  picture  panorama !  It 
is  between  1680  and  1710. 

A  hatless  youth,  swarthy  from  five  years  of  terri- 
ble exposure,  hair  straight  as  a  string,  gabbling 
French  but  speaking  no  Spanish,  a  slave  white  traded 
from  Indian  tribe  to  Indian  tribe,  all  the  way  from 
the  Gulf  of  Mexico  to  the  interior  of  New  Spain,  is 
brought  before  the  viceroy.  Do  you  know  who  he 
is?  He  is  Jean  L'Archeveque,  the  French-Canadian 
lad  who  helped  to  murder  La  Salle  down  on  Trinity 
Bay  in  Texas.  What  are  the  French  doing  down 
on  Trinity  Bay?  Do  they  intend  to  explore  and 
claim  this  part  of  America,  too?  In  the  abuses  of 
slavery  among  the  Indians  for  five  years,  the  lad 


156         THE  GOVERNOR'S  PALACE 

has  paid  the  terrible  penalty  for  the  crime  into  which 
he  was  betrayed  by  his  youth.  He  is  scarred  with 
wounds  and  beatings.  He  is  too  guilt-stricken  ever 
to  return  to  New  France.  His  information  may  be 
useful  to  New  Spain;  so  he  is  enrolled  in  the  guards 
of  the  Spanish  Viceroy  of  Santa  Fe;  and  he  is  sent 
out  to  San  Ildefonso  and  Santa  Clara,  where  he 
founds  a  family  and  where  his  records  may  be  seen 
to  this  day.  For  those  copy-book  moralists  who 
like  to  know  that  Divine  retribution  occasionally 
works  out  in  daily  life,  it  may  be  added  that  Jean 
L'Archeveque  finally  came  to  as  violent  a  death  as 
he  had  brought  to  the  great  French  explorer,  La 
Salle. 

Or  take  a  panorama  of  a  later  day.  It  is  just 
before  the  fall  of  Spanish  rule.  The  Governor  sits 
in  his  Palace  at  Santa  Fe,  a  mightier  autocrat  than 
the  Pope  in  Rome;  for,  as  the  Russians  say,  u  God  is 
high  in  His  Heavens,"  and  the  King  is  far  away, 
and  those  who  want  justice  in  Santa  Fe,  must  pay  — 
pay  —  pay  —  pay  in  gold  coin  that  can  be  put  in 
the  iron  chest  of  the  viceroy.  (You  can  see  speci- 
mens of  those  iron  chests  all  through  New  Mexico 
yet  —  chests  with  a  dozen  secret  springs  to  guard 
the  family  fortune  of  the  hidden  gold  bullion.)  A 
woman  bursts  into  the  presence  of  the  Viceroy,  and 
throws  herself  on  her  knees.  It  is  a  terrible  tale  — 
the  kind  of  tale  we  are  too  finical  to  tell  in  these 
modern  days,  though  that  is  not  saying  there  are  not 
many  such  tales  to  be  told.  The  woman's  young 
sister  has  married  an  officer  of  the  Viceroy's  ring. 


THE  GOVERNOR'S  PALACE         157 

He  has  beaten  her  as  he  would  a  slave.  He  has 
treated  her  to  vile  indecencies  pf  which  only  Hell 
keeps  record.  She  had  fled  to  her  father;  but  the 
father,  fearing  the  power  of  the  Viceroy,  had  sent 
her  back  to  the  man;  and  the  man  has  killed  her 
with  his  brutalities.  (I  have  this  whole  story  from 
a  lineal  descendant  of  the  family.)  The  woman 
throws  back  her  rebozo,  drops  to  her  knees  before 
the  Viceroy,  and  demands  justice.  The  Viceroy 
thinks  and  thinks.  A  woman  more  or  less!  What 
does  it  matter?  The  woman's  father  had  been 
afraid  to  act,  evidently.  The  husband  is  a  member 
of  the  government  ring.  Interference  might  stir  up 
an  ugly  mess  —  revelations  of  extortion  and  so  on ! 
Besides,  justice  is  worth  so  much  per;  and  this 
woman  —  what  has  she  to  pay?  This  Viceroy  will 
do  nothing.  The  woman  rises  slowly,  incredulous. 
Is  this  justice?  She  denounces  the  Viceroy  in  fiery, 
impassioned  speech.  The  Viceroy  smiles  and  twirls 
his  mustachios.  What  can  a  woman  do?  The 
woman  proclaims  her  imprecation  of  a  court  that 
fails  of  justice.  (Do  our  courts  fail  of  justice?  Is 
there  no  lesson  in  that  past  for  us?)  Do  you  know 
what  she  did?  She  did  what  not  one  woman  in  a 
million  could  do  to-day,  when  conditions  are  a  thou- 
sand fold  easier.  She  went  back  to  her  home.  It 
was  just  about  where  the  pretty  Spanish  house  of 
Mr.  Morley  of  the  Archaeological  School  stands  to- 
day. She  gathered  up  all  the  loose  gold  she  could 
and  bound  it  in  a  belt  around  her  waist.  Then  she 
took  the  most  powerful  horse  she  had  from  the  kraal, 


158        THE  GOVERNOR'S  PALACE 

saddled  him  and  rode  out  absolutely  alone  for  the 
city  of  Old  Mexico  —  900  miles  as  the  trail  ran. 
Apaches,  Comanches,  Navajos,  beset  the  way.  She 
rode  at  night  and  slept  by  day.  The  trail  was  a 
desert  waste  of  waterless,  bare,  rocky  hills  and  quick- 
sand rivers  and  blistering  heat.  God,  or  the  Virgin 
to  whom  she  constantly  prayed,  or  her  own  dauntless 
spirit,  must  have  piloted  the  way;  for  she  reached 
the  old  city  of  Mexico,  laid  her  case  before  the 
King's  representatives,  and  won  the  day.  Her  sis- 
ter's death  was  avenged.  The  husband  was  tried 
and  executed:  and  the  Viceroy  was  deposed.  Most 
of  us  know  of  almost  similar  cases.  I  think  of  a 
man  who  has  repeatedly  tried  for  a  federal  judge- 
ship  in  New  Mexico,  who  has  literally  been  guilty 
of  every  crime  on  the  human  calendar.  Yet  we 
don't  at  risk  of  life  push  these  cases  to  retribution. 
Is  that  one  of  the  lessons  the  past  has  for  us?  Span- 
ish power  fell  in  New  Mexico  because  there  came  a 
time  when  there  was  neither  justice  nor  retribution 
in  any  of  the  courts. 

Other  panoramas  there  were  beneath  the  age- 
mellowed  beams  of  the  Palace  ceiling,  panoramas 
of  Comanche  and  Navajo  and  Ute  and  Apache 
stalking  in  war  feathers  before  a  Spanish  governor 
clad  in  velvets  and  laces.  Tradition  has  it  that  a 
Ute  was  once  struck  dead  in  the  Governor's  pres- 
ence. Certainly,  all  four  tribes  wrought  havoc  and 
raid  to  the  very  doors  of  the  Palace.  Within  only 
the  last  century,  a  Comanche  chief  and  his  warriors 
came  to  Santa  Fe  demanding  the  daughter  of  a  lead- 


THE  GOVERNOR'S  PALACE         159 

ing  trader  in  marriage  for  the  chief's  son.  The 
garrison  was  weak,  in  spite  of  fustian  and  rusty 
helmets  and  battered  breastplates  and  velvet  doublets 
and  boots  half  way  to  the  waist  —  there  were  sel- 
dom more  than  200  soldiers,  and  the  pusillanimous 
Governor  counseled  deception.  He  told  the  Co- 
manche  that  the  trader's  daughter  had  died,  and  or- 
dered the  girl  to  hide.  The  only  peace  that  an 
Indian  respects  —  or  any  other  man,  for  that  matter 
—  is  the  peace  that  is  a  victory.  The  Indian  sus- 
pected that  the  answer  was  the  answer  of  the  coward, 
a  lie,  and  came  back  with  his  Comanche  warriors. 
While  the  soldiers  huddled  inside  the  Palace  walls, 
the  town  was  raided.  The  trader  was  murdered 
and  the  daughter  carried  off  to  the  Comanches, 
where  she  died  of  abuse.  When  these  tragedies  fell 
on  daughters  of  the  Pilgrims  in  New  England,  the 
Saxon  strain  of  the  warrior  women  in  their  blood 
rose  to  meet  the  challenge  of  fate ;  and  they  brained 
their  captors  with  an  ax;  but  no  such  warrior  strain 
was  in  the  blood  of  the  daughters  of  Spain.  By  re- 
ligion, by  nationality,  by  tradition,  the  Spanish  girl 
was  the  purely  convent  product:  womanhood  pro- 
tected by  a  ten-foot  wall.  When  the  wall  fell  away, 
she  was  helpless  as  a  hot-house  flower  set  out  amid 
violent  winds. 

Diagonally  across  the  Plaza  from  the  Governor's 
Palace  stands  the  old  Fonda,  or  Exchange  Hotel, 
whence  came  the  long  caravans  of  American  traders 
on  the  Santa  Fe  Trail.  Behind  the  Palace  about  a 
quarter  of  a  mile,  was  the  Gareta,  a  sort  of  com- 


160        THE  GOVERNOR'S  PALACE 

bincd  custom  house  and  prison.  The  combination 
was  deeply  expressive  of  Spanish  rule  in  those  early 
days,  for  independent  of  what  the  American's  white- 
tented  wagon  might  contain  —  baled  hay  or  price- 
less silks  or  chewing  tobacco  —  a  duty  of  $500  was 
levied  against  each  mulMeam  wagon  of  the  Ameri- 
can trader.  Did  a  trader  protest,  or  hold  back,  he 
was  promptly  clapped  in  irons.  It  was  cheaper  to 
pay  the  duty  than  buy  a  release.  The  walls  of 
both  the  Fonda  and  the  Gareta  were  of  tremendous 
thickness,  four  to  six  feet  of  solid  adobe,  which  was 
hard  as  our  modern  cement.  In  the  walls  behind 
the  Gareta  and  on  the  walls  behind  the  Palace,  pitted 
bullet  holes  have  been  found.  Beneath  the  holes 
was  embedded  human  hair. 

Nothing  more  picturesque  exists  in  America's  past 
than  the  panorama  of  this  old  Santa  Fe  Trail. 
Santa  Fe  was  to  the  Trail  what  Cairo  was  to  the 
caravans  coming  up  out  of  the  Desert  in  Egypt. 
Twitchell,  the  modern  historian,  and  Gregg,  the  old 
chronicler  of  last  century's  Trail,  give  wonderfully 
vivid  pictures  of  the  coming  of  the  caravans  to  the 
Palace.  "  As  the  caravans  ascended  the  ridge  which 
overlooks  the  city,  the  clamorings  of  the  men  and 
the  rejoicings  of  the  bull  whackers  could  be  heard 
on  every  side.  Even  the  animals  seemed  to  par- 
ticipate in  the  humor  of  their  riders.  I  doubt 
whether  the  first  sight  of  Jerusalem  brought  the 
crusaders  more  tumultuous  and  soul-enrapturing 
joy." 

We  talk  of  the  picturesque  fur  trade  of  the  North, 


THE  GOVERNOR'S  PALACE         161 

when  brigades  of  birch  canoes  one  and  two  hundred 
strong  penetrated  every  river  and  lake  of  the  wil- 
derness of  the  Northwest.  Let  us  take  a  look  at 
these  caravan  brigades  of  the  traders  of  the  South- 
west! Teams  were  hitched  tandem  to  the  white- 
tented  wagons.  Drivers  did  not  ride  in  the  wagons. 
They  rode  astride  mule  or  horse,  with  long  bull 
whips  thick  as  a  snake  skin,  which  could  reach  from 
rear  to  fore  team.  I  don't  know  how  they  do  it; 
but  when  the  drivers  lash  these  whips  out  full  length, 
they  cause  a  crackling  like  pistol  shots.  The  owner 
of  the  caravan  was  usually  some  gentleman  adven- 
turer from  Virginia  or  Kentucky  or  Louisiana  or 
Missouri;  but  each  caravan  had  its  captain  to  com- 
mand, and  its  outriders  to  scout  for  Indians.  These 
scouts  were  of  every  station  in  life  with  morals  of 
as  varied  aspect  as  Joseph's  coat  of  many  colors. 
Kit  Carson  was  once  one  of  these  scouts.  Governor 
Bent  was  one  of  the  traders.  Stephen  B.  Elkins 
first  came  to  New  Mexico  with  a  bull  whacker's  cara- 
van. In  the  morning,,  every  teamster  would  vie 
with  his  fellows  to  hitch  up  fastest.  Teams  ready, 
he  would  mount  and  call  back — "All's  set."  An 
uproar  of  whinnying  and  braying,  the  clank  of 
chains,  and  then  the  captain's  shout  — "  Stretch  out," 
when  the  long  line  of  twenty  or  thirty  white-tented 
wagons  would  rumble  out  for  the  journey  of  thirty 
to  sixty  days  across  the  plains.  Each  wagon  had 
five  yoke  of  oxen,  with  six  or  eight  extra  mule  teams 
behind  in  case  of  emergency.  About  three  tons 
made  a  load.  Twenty  miles  was  a  good  day's 


i62        THE  GOVERNOR'S  PALACE 

travel.  Camping  places  near  good  water  and  pas- 
turage were  chosen  ahead  by  the  scouts.  Wagons 
kept  together  in  groups  of  four.  In  case  of  attack 
•  by  Comanche  or  Ute,  these  wagons  wheeled  into  a 
circle  for  defense  with  men  and  beasts  inside  the 
extemporized  kraal.  Campfires  were  kept  away 
from  wagons  to  avoid  giving  target  to  foes.  Blan- 
kets consisted  of  buffalo  robes,  and  the  rations  "  hard 
tack,"  pork  and  such  game  as  the  scouts  and  sharp- 
shooters could  bring  down.  A  favorite  trick  of 
Indian  raiders  was  to  wait  till  all  animals  were  teth- 
ered out  for  pasturage,  and  then  stampede  mules 
and  oxen.  In  the  confusion,  wagons  would  be 
overturned  and  looted. 

As  the  long  white  caravans  came  to  their  jour- 
ney's end  at  Santa  Fe,  literally  the  whole  Spanish 
and  Indian  population  crowded  to  the  Plaza  in  front 
of  the  Palace.  "  Los  Americanos  1  Los  Carros ! 
La  Caravana  !  " —  were  the  shouts  ringing  through 
the  streets;  and  Santa  Fe's  perpetual  siesta  would 
be  awakened  to  a  week's  fair  or  barter.  Wagons 
were  lined  up  at  the  custom  house;  and  the  trader 
presented  himself  before  the  Spanish  governor, 
trader  and  governor  alike  dressed  in  their  best  regi- 
mentals. Very  fair,  very  soft  spoken,  very  pro- 
fuse of  compliments  was  the  interview;  but  divested 
of  profound  bows  and  flowery  compliments,  it  ended 
in  the  American  paying  $500  a  wagon,  or  losing  his 
goods.  The  goods  were  then  bartered  at  a  stag- 
gering advance.  Plain  broadcloth  sold  at  $25  a 
yard,  linen  at  $4  a  yard,  and  the  price  on  other 


THE  GOVERNOR'S  PALACE         163 

goods  was  proportionate.  Goods  taken  in  exchange 
were  hides,  wool,  gold  and  silver  bullion,  Indian 
blankets  and  precious  stones. 

Travelers  from  Mexico  to  the  outside  world  went 
by  stage  or  private  omnibus  with  outriders  and 
guards  and  sharpshooters.  Young  Spanish  girls 
sent  East  to  school  were  accompanied  by  such  a 
retinue  of  defenders,  slaves  and  servants,  as  might 
have  attended  a  European  monarch;  and  a  whole 
bookful  of  stories  could  be  written  of  adventures 
among  the  young  Spanish  nobility  going  out  to  see 
the  world.  The  stage  fare  varied  from  $160  to 
$250  far  as  the  Mississippi.  Though  Stephen  B. 
Elkins  went  to  New  Mexico  with  a  bull  whacker's 
team,  it  was  not  long  before  he  was  sending  gold 
bullion  from  mining  and  trading  operations  out  to 
St.  Louis  and  New  York.  How  to  get  this  gold 
bullion  past  the  highwaymen  who  infested  the  stage 
route,  was  always  a  problem.  I  know  of  one  old 
Spanish  lady,  who  yearly  went  to  St.  Louis  to  make 
family  purchases  and  used  to  smuggle  Elkins'  gold 
out  for  him  in  belts  and  petticoats  and  disreputable 
looking  old  hand  bags.  Once,  when  she  was  going 
out  in  midsummer  heat,  she  had  a  belt  of  her  hus- 
band's drafts  and  Elkins'  gold  round  her  waist. 
The  way  grew  hotter  and  hotter.  The  old  lady 
unstrapped  the  buckskin  reticule  —  looking,  for  all 
the  world,  like  a  woman's  carry-all  —  and  threw  it 
up  on  top  of  the  stage.  An  hour  later,  highwaymen 
"  went  through  "  the  passengers.  Rings,  watches, 
jewels,  coin  were  taken  off  the  travelers;  and  the 


164        THE  GOVERNOR'S  PALACE 

mail  bags  were  looted;  but  the  bandits  never  thought 
of  examining  the  old  bag  on  top  of  the  stage,  in 
which  was  gold  worth  all  the  rest  of  the  loot. 

In  those  days,  gambling  was  the  universal  passion 
of  high  and  low  in  New  Mexico;  and  many  a  Span- 
ish don  and  American  trader,  who  had  taken  over 
tens  of  thousands  in  the  barter  of  the  caravan, 
wasted  it  over  the  gaming  table  before  dawn  of  the 
next  day.  The  Fonda,  or  old  Exchange  Hotel,  was 
the  center  of  high  play;  but  it  may  as  well  be  ac- 
knowledged, the  highest  play  of  all,  the  wildest 
stakes  were  often  laid  in  the  Governor's  Palace. 

Luckily,  the  passion  for  destroying  the  old  has  not 
invaded  Santa  Fe.  The  people  want  their  Palace 
preserved  as  it  was,  is,  and  ever  shall  be;  and  the 
recent  restoration  has  been,  not  a  reconstruction,  but 
a  taking  away  of  all  the  modern  and  adventitious. 
Where  modern  pillars  have  been  placed  under  the 
long  front  portico,  they  are  being  replaced  by  the 
old  portal  type  of  pillar  —  the  fluted  capital  across 
the  main  column  supporting  the  roof  beams.  This 
type  of  portal  has  come  in  such  favor  in  New  Mexico 
that  it  is  being  embodied  in  modern  houses  for  ar- 
cades, porches  and  gardens. 

The  main  entrance  of  the  Palace  is  square  in  the 
center.  You  pass  into  what  must  have  been  the 
ancient  reception  room  leading  to  an  audience  cham- 
ber on  the  left.  What  amazes  you  is  the  enormous 
thickness  of  these  adobe  walls.  Each  window  case- 
ment is  wider  than  a  bench;  and  an  open  door  laid 
back  is  not  wider  than  the  thickness  of  the  wall. 


THE  GOVERNOR'S  PALACE         165 

To-day  the  reception  hall  and,  indeed,  the  rooms  of 
the  center  Palace  present  some  of  the  finest  mural 
paintings  in  America.  These  have  been  placed  on 
the  walls  by  the  Archaeological  School  of  America 
which  with  the  Historical  Society  occupies  the  main 
portions  of  the  old  building.  You  see  drawings  of 
the  coming  of  the  first  Spanish  caravels,  of  Coro- 
nado,  of  Don  Diego  de  Vargas,  who  was  the 
Frontenac  of  the  Southwest,  reconquering  the  prov- 
inces in  1680-94,  about  the  same  time  that  the  great 
Frontenac  was  playing  his  part  in  French  Canada. 
There  are  pictures,  too,  of  the  caravans  crossing  the 
plains,  of  the  coming  of  American  occupation,  of 
the  Moki  and  Hopi  and  Zuni  pueblos,  of  the  Mis- 
sions of  which  only  ruins  to-day  mark  the  sites  in 
the  Jemez,  at  Sandia,  and  away  out  in  the  Desert 
of  Abo. 

To  the  left  of  the  reception  room  is  an  excellent 
art  gallery  of  Southwestern  subjects.  Here,  artists 
of  the  growing  Southwestern  School  send  their  work 
for  exhibition  and  sale.  It  is  significant  that  within 
the  last  few  years  prices  have  gone  up  from  a  few 
dollars  to  hundreds  and  thousands.  Nausbaum's 
photographic  work  of  the  modern  Indian  is  one  of 
the  striking  features  of  the  Palace.  Of  course, 
there  are  pictures  by  Curtis  and  Burbank  and  Sharpe 
and  others  of  the  Southwestern  School;  but  perhaps 
the  most  interesting  rooms  to  the  newcomer,  to  the 
visitor,  who  doesn't  know  that  we  have  an  ancient 
America,  are  those  where  the  mural  drawings  are 
devoted  to  the  cave  dwellers  and  prehistoric  races. 


1 66        THE  GOVERNOR'S  PALACE 

These  were  done  by  Carl  Lotave  of  Paris  out  on 
the  ground  of  the  ancient  races.  In  conception  and 
execution,  they  are  among  the  finest  murals  in  Amer- 
ica. 

Long  ago,  the  Governor's  Palace  had  twin  tow- 
ers and  a  chapel.  Bells  in  the  old  Spanish  churches 
were  not  tolled.  They  were  struck  gong  fashion 
by  an  attendant,  who  ascended  the  towers.  These 
bells  were  cast  of  a  very  fine  quality  of  old  copper; 
and  the  tone  was  largely  determined  by  the  quality 
of  the  cast.  Old  Mission  bells  are  scarce  to-day  in 
New  Mexico;  and  collectors  offer  as  high  as  $1,500 
and  $3,000  for  the  genuine  article.  Vesper  bells 
played  a  great  part  in  the  life  of  the  old  Spanish 
regime.  Ladies  might  be  promenading  the  Plaza, 
workmen  busy  over  their  tasks,  gamblers  hard  at 
the  wheel  and  dice.  At  vesper  call,  men,  women 
and  children  dropped  to  knees;  and  for  a  moment 
silence  fell,  all  but  the  calling  of  the  vesper  bells. 
Then  the  bells  ceased  ringing,  and  life  went  on  in 
its  noisy  stream. 

No  account  of  the  Governor's  Palace  would  be 
complete  without  some  mention  of  the  marvels  of 
dress  among  the  dons  and  donas  of  the  old  regime. 
Could  we  see  them  promenading  the  Plaza  and  the 
Palace  as  they  paraded  their  gayety  less  than  half 
a  century  ago,  we  would  imagine  ourselves  in  some 
play  house  of  the  French  Court  in  its  most  luxurious 
days.  Indians  dressed  then  as  they  dress  to-day,  in 
bright-colored  blankets  fastened  gracefully  round  hip 
and  shoulders.  Peons  or  peasants  wore  scrapes, 


THE  GOVERNOR'S  PALACE         167 

blankets  with  a  slit  in  the  center,  over  the  shoul- 
ders. Women  of  position  wore  not  hats  but  the 
silk  rebozo  or  scarf,  thrown  over  the  head  with  one 
end  back  across  the  left  shoulder.  On  the  street, 
the  face  was  almost  covered  by  this  scarf.  Pre- 
sumably the  purpose  was  to  conceal  charms;  but 
when  you  consider  the  combination  of  dark  eyes  and 
waving  hair  and  a  scarf  of  the  finest  color  and  tex- 
ture that  could  be  bought  in  China  or  the  Indies,  it 
is  a  question  whether  that  scarf  did  not  set  off  what 
it  was  designed  to  conceal.  About  the  shawls  used 
as  scarfs  there  is  much  misconception.  These  are 
not  of  Spanish  or  Mexican  make.  They  come  down 
in  the  Spanish  families  from  the  days  when  the  ves- 
sels of  the  traders  of  Mexico  trafficked  with  China 
and  Japan.  These  old  shawls  to-day  bring  prices 
varying  all  the  way  from  $200  to  $2,000. 

The  don  of  fashion  dressed  even  more  gayly  than 
his  spouse.  Jewelry  was  a  passion  with  both  men 
and  women;  and  the  finest  type  of  old  jewelry  in 
America  to-day  is  to  be  found  in  New  Mexico. 
The  hat  of  the  don  was  the  wide-brimmed  sombrero. 
Around  this  was  a  silver  or  gold  cord,  with  a  gold 
or  silver  cockade.  The  jackets  were  of  colored 
broadcloth  with  buttons  of  silver  or  gold,  not  brass; 
but  the  trousers  were  at  once  the  glory  and  the 
vanity  of  the  wearer.  Gold  and  silver  buttons  or- 
namented the  seams  of  the  legs  from  hip  to  knee. 
There  were  gold  clasps  at  the  garter  and  gold 
clasps  at  the  knee.  A  silk  sash  with  tasseled  cords 
or  fringe  hanging  down  one  side  took  the  place  of 


i68         THE  GOVERNOR'S  PALACE 

modern  suspenders.  Leather  leggings  for  outdoor 
wear  were  carved  or  embossed.  A  scrape  or  velvet 
cape  lined  with  bright-colored  silk  completed  the 
costume.  Bridles  and  horse  trappings  were  gor- 
geous with  silver,  the  pommel  and  stirrups  being 
overlaid  with  it.  The  bridle  was  a  barbarous  silver 
thing  with  a  bit  cruel  enough  to  control  tigers;  and 
the  rowels  of  the  spurs  were  two  or  three  inches 
long. 

No,  these  were  not  people  of  French  and  Spanish 
courts.  They  were  people  of  our  own  Western 
America  less  than  a  century  ago;  but  though  they 
were  not  people  of  the  playhouse,  as  they  almost 
seem  to  us,  they  are  essentially  a  play-people. 
The  Spaniard  of  the  Southwest  lived,  not  to  work, 
but  to  play;  and  when  he  worked,  it  was  only  that 
he  might  play  the  harder.  Los  Americanos  came 
and  changed  all  that.  They  turned  the  Spanish 
play-world  up  side  down  and  put  work  on  top. 
Roam  through  the  Governor's  Palace !  Call  up  the 
old  gay  life !  We  undoubtedly  handle  more  money 
than  the  Spanish  dons  and  donas  of  the  old  days; 
but  frankly  —  which  stand  for  the  more  joy  out  of 
life;  those  laughing  philosophers,  or  we  modern 
work-demons? 


CHAPTER  X 

THE  GOVERNOR'S  PALACE  OF  SANTA  FE 
(Continued) 

OF  all  the  traditions  clinging  round  the  old 
Palace  at  Santa  Fe,  those  connected  with 
Don  Diego  de  Vargas,  the  reconqueror  of 
New  Mexico,  are  best  known  and  most  picturesque. 
Yearly,  for  two  and  a  quarter  centuries,  the  people 
of  New  Mexico  have  commemorated  De  Vargas' 
victory  by  a  procession  to  the  church  which  he  built 
in  gratitude  to  Heaven  for  his  success.  This  pro- 
cession is  at  once  a  great  public  festival  and  a  sacred 
religious  ceremony;  for  the  image  of  the  Virgin, 
which  De  Vargas  used  when  he  planted  the  Cross 
on  the  Plaza  in  front  of  the  Palace  and  sang  the 
Te  Deum  with  the  assembled  Franciscan  monks,  is 
the  same  image  now  used  in  the  theatrical  proces- 
sion of  the  religious  ceremony  yearly  celebrated  by 
Indians,  Spanish  and  Americans. 

The  De  Vargas  procession  is  a  ceremony  unique 
in  America.  The  very  Indians  whose  ancestors  De 
Vargas'  arms  subjugated,  now  yearly  reenact  the 
scenes  of  the  struggles  of  their  forefathers  to  throw 
off  white  rule.  Young  Mexicans,  descendants  of 
the  very  officers  who  marched  with  De  Vargas  in 
his  campaigns  of  1692-3-4,  take  the  part  of  the  con- 

169 


i7o        THE  GOVERNOR'S  PALACE 

quering  heroes.  Costumes,  march,  religious  cere- 
monies of  thanks,  public  festival  —  all  have  been 
kept  as  close  to  original  historic  fact  as  possible. 

De  Vargas,  himself,  was  to  the  Southwest  what 
Frontenac  was  to  French  Canada  —  a  bluff  soldier 
animated  by  religious  motives,  who  believed  only  in 
the  peace  that  is  a  victory,  put  the  fear  of  God  in 
the  hearts  of  his  enemies,  and  built  on  that  fear  a 
superstructure  of  reverence  and  love.  It  need  not 
be  told  that  such  a  character  rode  rough-shod  over 
official  red-tape,  and  had  a  host  of  envious  curs 
barking  at  his  heels.  They  dragged  him  down,  for 
a  period  of  short  eclipse,  these  Lilliputian  enemies, 
just  as  Frontenac's  enemies  caused  his  recall  by  a 
charge  of  misusing  public  funds;  but  in  neither  case 
could  the  charges  be  sustained.  Bluff  warriors,  not 
counting  house  clerks,  were  needed;  and  De  Vargas, 
like  Frontenac,  came  through  all  charges  unscathed. 

The  two  heroes  of  America's  Indian  wars  — 
Frontenac  of  the  North,  De  Vargas  of  the  South  — 
were  contemporaries.  It  will  be  remembered  how 
up  on  the  St.  Lawrence  and  among  the  Mohawk 
tribes  of  New  York,  a  wave  of  revolt  against  white 
man  rule  swept  from  1642  to  1682.  It  was  not  un- 
natural that  the  red  warrior  should  view  with  alarm 
the  growing  dominance  and  assumption  of  power  on 
the  part  of  the  white.  In  Canada,  we  know  the 
brandy  of  the  white  trader  hastened  the  revolt  and 
added  horror  to  the  outrages,  when  the  settlements 
lying  round  Montreal  and  Quebec  were  ravaged  and 
burnt  under  the  very  cannon  mouths  of  the  two  im- 


THE  GOVERNOR'S  PALACE         171 

potent  and  terrified  forts.  The  same  wave  of 
revolt  that  scourged  French  Canada  in  the  eighties, 
went  like  wild  fire  over  the  Southwest  from  1682 
to  1694.  Was  there  any  connection  between  the 
two  efforts  to  throw  off  white  man  rule?  To  the 
historian,  seemingly,  there  was  not;  but  ask  the 
Navajo  or  Apache  of  the  South  about  traders  in 
the  North,  and  you  will  be  astonished  how  the  tra- 
ditions of  the  tribes  preserve  legends  of  the  Atha- 
bascan stock  in  the  North,  from  whom  they  claim 
descent.  Ask  a  modern  Indian  of  the  interior  of 
British  Columbia  about  the  Navajos,  and  he  will 
tell  you  how  the  wise  men  of  the  tribe  preserve 
verbal  history  of  a  branch  of  this  people  driven  far 
South  — "  those  other  Denes,"  he  will  tell  you. 
Traders  explain  the  wonderful  way  news  has  of 
traveling  from  tribe  to  tribe  by  the  laconic  expres- 
sion, "  moccasin  telegram." 

Whether  or  not  the  infection  of  revolt  spread  by 
"  moccasin  telegram  "  from  Canada  to  Mexico,  the 
storm  broke,  and  broke  with  frightful  violence  over 
the  Southwest.  The  immediate  cause  was  religious 
interference.  All  pueblo  people  have  secret  lodges 
held  in  underground  estufas  or  kivas.  To  these 
ceremonies  no  white  man  however  favored  is  ever 
admitted.  White  men  know  as  little  of  the  rites 
practiced  in  these  lodges  by  the  pueblo  people  as 
when  Coronado  came  in  1540.  To  the  Spanish 
governors  and  priests,  the  thing  was  anathema  - 
abomination  of  witchcraft  and  sorcery  and  secrecy 
that  risked  the  eternal  damnation  of  converts'  souls. 


172        THE  GOVERNOR'S  PALACE 

There  was  a  garrison  of  only  250  men  at  the  Pal- 
ace; yet  already  the  church  boasted  fifty  friars,  from 
eleven  to  seventeen  missions,  and  converts  by  the 
thousands.  But  the  souls  of  the  holy  padres  were 
sorely  tried  by  these  estufa  rites,  "  platicas  de 
noche"  "  night  conversations  " —  the  priests  called 
them.  Well  might  all  New  Spain  have  been  dis- 
turbed by  these  "  night  conversations."  The  sub- 
ject bound  under  fearful  oath  of  secrecy  was  nothing 
more  nor  less  than  the  total  extermination  of  every 
white  man,  woman  and  child  north  of  the  Rio 
Grande. 

Some  unwise  governor  —  Trevino,  I  think  it  was 
—  had  issued  an  edict  in  1675  forbidding  the 
pueblos  to  hold  their  secret  lodges  in  the  estufas. 
By  way  of  enforcing  his  edict,  he  had  forty-seven 
of  the  wise  men  or  Indian  priests  (he  called  them 
"sorcerers")  imprisoned;  hanged  three  in  the  jail 
yard  of  the  Palace  as  a  warning,  and  after  severe 
whipping  and  enforced  fasts,  sent  the  other  forty- 
four  home.  Picture  the  situation  to  yourself  I  The 
wise  men  or  governors  of  the  pueblos  are  always  old 
men  elected  out  of  respect  for  their  superior  wis- 
dom, men  used  to  having  their  slightest  word  im- 
plicitly obeyed.  Whipped,  shamed,  disgraced,  they 
dispersed  from  the  Palace,  down  the  Rio  Grande 
to  Isleta,  west  to  the  city  on  the  impregnable  rocks 
of  Acoma,  north  to  that  whole  group  of  pueblo  cities 
from  Jemez  to  Santa  Fe  and  Pecos  and  Taos. 
What  do  you  think  they  did?  Fill  up  the  under- 
ground estufas  and  hang  their  heads  in  shame  among 


An  adobe  gateway  of  old-world  charm  in  Santa  Fe 


THE  GOVERNOR'S  PALACE         173 

men?  Then,  you  don't  know  the  Indian!  You 
may  break  his  neck;  but  you  can't  bend  it.  The 
very  first  thing  they  did  was  to  gather  their  young 
warriors  in  the  estufas.  Picture  that  scene  to  your- 
self, too!  An  old  rain  priest  at  San  Ildefonso, 
through  the  kindness  of  Dr.  Hewitt  of  the  Archae- 
ological School,  took  us  down  the  estufa  at  that 
pueblo,  where  some  of  the  bloodiest  scenes  of  the 
rebellion  were  enacted.  Needless  to  say,  he  took 
us  down  in  the  day  time,  when  there  are  no  cere- 
monies. 

The  estufa  is  large  enough  to  seat  three  or  four 
hundred  men.  It  is  night  time.  A  few  oil  tapers 
are  burning  in  stone  saucers,  the  pueblo  lamp.  The 
warriors  come  stealing  down  the  ladder.  No 
woman  is  admitted.  The  men  are  dressed  in  linen 
trousers  with  colored  blankets  fastened  Grecian 
fashion  at  the  waist.  They  seat  themselves  silently 
on  the  adobe  or  cement  benches  around  the  circular 
wall.  The  altar  place,  whence  comes  the  Sacred 
Fire  from  the  gods  of  the  under  world,  is  situated 
just  under  the  ladder.  The  priests  descend,  four 
or  five  of  them,  holding  their  blankets  in  a  square 
that  acts  as  a  drop  curtain  concealing  the  altar. 
When  all  have  descended,  a  trap  door  of  brush 
above  is  closed.  The  taper  lamps  go  out.  The 
priests  drop  their  blankets;  and  behold  on  the  altar 
the  sacred  fire;  and  the  outraged  wise  man  in  im- 
passioned speech  denouncing  white  man  rule,  insult 
to  the  Indian  gods,  destruction  of  the  Spanish  rulerl 

Of  the  punished  medicine  men,  one  of  the  most 


174        THE  GOVERNOR'S  PALACE 

incensed  was  an  elderly  Indian  called  Pope,  said  to 
be  originally  from  San  Juan,  but  at  that  time  living 
in  Taos.  I  don't  know  what  ground  there  is  for  it, 
but  tradition  has  it  that  when  Pope  effected  the  cur- 
tain drop  round  the  sacred  fire  of  the  estufa  in  Taos, 
he  produced,  or  induced  the  warriors  looking  on 
breathlessly  to  believe  that  he  produced,  three  in- 
fernal spirits  from  the  under  world,  who  came  from 
the  great  war-god  Montezuma  to  command  the 
pueblo  race  to  unite  with  the  Navajo  and  Apache 
in  driving  the  white  man  from  the  Southwest.  If 
there  be  any  truth  in  the  tradition,  it  is  not  hard  to 
account  for  the  trick.  Tradition  or  trick,  it  worked 
like  magic.  The  warriors  believed.  Couriers  went 
scurrying  by  night  from  town  to  town,  with  the 
knotted  cord  —  some  say  it  was  of  deer  thong, 
others  of  palm  leaf.  The  knots  represented  the 
number  of  days  to  the  time  of  uprising.  The  man, 
for  instance,  who  ran  from  Taos  to  Pecos,  would 
pull  out  a  knot  for  each  day  he  ran.  A  new  courier 
would  carry  the  cord  on  to  the  next  town.  There 
was  some  confusion  about  the  untying  of  those  knots. 
Some  say  the  rebellion  was  to  take  place  on  the  nth 
of  August,  1682;  others,  on  the  I3th.  Anyway, 
the  first  blow  was  struck  on  the  roth.  Not  a  pueblo 
town  failed  to  rally  to  the  call,  as  the  Highlanders 
of  old  responded  to  the  signal  of  the  bloody  cross. 
New  Mexico  at  this  time  numbered  some  3,000 
Spanish  colonists,  the  majority  living  on  ranches  up 
and  down  the  Rio  Grande  and  surrounding  Santa 
Fe.  The  captain-general,  who  had  had  nothing  to 


THE  GOVERNOR'S  PALACE         175 

do  with  the  foolish  decrees  that  produced  the  revolt, 
happened  to  be  Don  Antonio  de  Otermin,  with 
Alonzo  Garcia  as  his  lieutenant.  In  spite  of  no 
women  being  admitted  to  the  secret,  the  secret  leaked 
out.  Pope's  son-in-law,  the  governor  of  San  Juan, 
was  setting  out  to  betray  the  whole  plot  to  the 
Spaniards,  when  he  was  killed  by  Pope's  own  hand. 

Such  widespread  preparations  could  not  proceed 
without  the  Mission  converts  getting  some  inkling; 
and  on  August  9,  Governor  Otermin  heard  that  two 
Indians  of  Tesuque  out  from  Santa  Fe  had  been 
ordered  to  join  a  rebellion.  He  had  the  Indians 
brought  before  him  in  the  audience  chamber  on  the 
loth.  They  told  him  all  they  knew;  and  they 
warned  him  that  any  warrior  refusing  to  take  part 
would  be  slain.  Here,  as  always  in  times  of  great 
confusion,  the  main  thread  of  the  story  is  lost  in  a 
multiplicity  of  detail.  Warning  had  also  come 
down  from  the  alcalde  at  Taos.  Otermin  scarcely 
seems  to  have  grasped  the  import  of  the  news;  for 
all  he  did  was  to  send  his  own  secret  scouts  out, 
warning  the  settlers  and  friars  to  seek  refuge  in 
Isleta,  or  Santa  Fe;  but  it  was  too  late.  The  In- 
dians got  word  they  had  been  betrayed  and  broke 
loose  in  a  mad  lust  of  revenge  and  blood  that  very 
Saturday  when  the  governor  was  sending  out  his 
spies. 

It  would  take  a  book  to  tell  the  story  of  all  the 
heroism  and  martyrdom  of  the  different  Missions. 
Parkman  has  told  the  story  of  the  martyrdom  of  the 
Jesuits  in  French  Canada;  and  many  other  books 


176         THE  GOVERNOR'S  PALACE 

have  been  written  on  the  subject.  No  Parkman  has 
yet  risen  to  tell  the  story  of  the  martyrdom  of  the 
Franciscans  in  New  Mexico.  In  one  fell  day,  be- 
fore the  captain-general  knew  anything  about  it,  400 
colonists  and  twenty-one  missionaries  had  been  slain 
—  butchered,  shot,  thrown  over  the  rocks,  suffo- 
cated in  their  burning  chapels.  Pope  was  in  the 
midst  of  it  all,  riding  like  an  incarnate  fury  on 
horseback  wearing  a  bull's  horn  in  the  middle  of  his 
forehead.  Apaches  and  Navajos,  of  course,  joined 
in  the  loot.  At  Taos,  out  of  seventy  whites,  two 
only  escaped;  and  they  left  their  wives  and  children 
dead  on  the  field  and  reached  Isleta  only  after  ten 
days'  wandering  in  the  mountains  at  night,  having 
hidden  by  day.  At  little  Tesuque,  north  of  Santa 
Fe,  only  the  alcalde  escaped  by  spurring  his  horse 
to  wilder  pace  than  the  Indians  could  follow.  The 
alcalde  had  seen  the  friar  flee  to  a  ravine.  Then 
an  Indian  came  out  wearing  the  priest's  shield;  and 
it  was  blood-spattered.  At  Santa  Clara,  soldiers, 
herders  and  colonists  were  slain  on  the  field  as  they 
workecj.  The  women  and  children  were  carried  off 
to  captivity  from  which  they  never  returned.  At 
Galisteo,  the  men  were  slain,  the  women  carried  off. 
Rosaries  were  burned  in  bonfires.  Churches  were 
plundered  and  profaned.  At  Santo  Domingo,  the 
bodies  of  the  three  priests  were  piled  in  a  heap  in 
front  of  the  church,  as  an  insult  to  the  white  man 
faith  that  would  have  destroyed  the  Indian  estufas. 
Down  at  Isleta,  Garcia,  the  lieutenant,  happened  to 
be  in  command,  and  during  Saturday  night  and  Sun- 


THE  GOVERNOR'S  PALACE         177 

day  morning,  he  rounded  inside  the  walls  of  Isleta 
seven  missionaries  and  1,500  settlers,  of  whom  only 
200  had  firearms. 

What  of  Captain-General  Otermin,  cooped  up  in 
the  Governor's  Palace  of  Santa  Fe,  awaiting  the  re- 
turn of  his  scouts?  The  reports  of  his  scouts,  one 
may  guess.  Reports  came  dribbling  in  till  Tues- 
day, and  by  that  time  there  were  no  Spanish  left 
alive  outside  Santa  Fe  and  Isleta.  Then  Otermin 
bestirred  himself  mightily.  Citizens  were  called  to 
take  refuge  in  the  Palace.  The  armory  was  opened 
and  arquebuses  handed  out  to  all  who  could  bear 
arms.  The  Holy  Sacrament  was  administered. 
Then  the  sacred  vessels  were  brought  to  the  Gov- 
ernor's Palace  and  hidden.  There  were  now  1,000 
persons  cooped  up  in  the  Governor's  Palace,  less 
than  100  capable  of  bearing  arms.  Trenches  were 
dug,  windows  barricaded,  walls  fortified.  Armed 
soldiers  mounted  the  roofs  of  houses  guarding  the 
Plaza  and  in  the  streets  approaching  it  were  sta- 
tioned cannon. 

Having  wiped  out  the  settlements,  the  pueblos  and 
their  allies  swooped  down  on  Santa  Fe,  led  by  Juan 
of  Galisteo  riding  with  a  convent  flag  round  his 
waist  as  sash.  To  parley  with  an  enemy  is  folly. 
Otermin  sent  for  Juan  to  come  to  the  Palace;  and 
in  the  audience  chamber  upbraided  him.  Juan,  one 
may  well  believe,  laughed.  He  produced  two 
crosses  —  a  red  one  and  a  white  one.  If  the 
Spaniards  would  accept  the  white  one  and  withdraw, 
the  Indians  would  desist  from  attack;  if  not  — 


178        THE  GOVERNOR'S  PALACE 

then  —  red  stood  for  blood.  Otermin  talked  abou*- 
"  pardon  for  treason,"  when  he  should  have  s^uck 
the  impudent  fellow  to  earth,  as  De  Vargas,  or  old 
Frontenac,  would  have  done  in  like  case. 

When  Juan  went  back  across  the  Plaza,  the  In- 
dians howled  with  joy,  danced  dervish  time  all  night, 
rang  the  bells  of  San  Miguel,  set  fire  to  the  church 
and  houses,  and  cut  the  water  supply  off  from  the 
yard  of  the  Palace.  The  valor  of  the  Spaniards 
could  not  have  been  very  great  from  August  I4th 
to  2Oth,  for  only  five  of  the  100  bearing  arms  were 
killed.  At  a  council  of  war  on  the  night  of  August 
1 9th,  it  was  decided  to  attempt  to  rush  the  foe, 
trampling  them  with  horses,  and  to  beat  a  way  open 
for  retreat.  Otermin  says  300  Indians  were  killed 
in  this  rally;  but  it  is  a  question.  The  Governor 
himself  came  back  with  an  arrow  wound  in  his  fore- 
head and  a  flesh  wound  near  his  heart.  Within 
twenty-four  hours,  he  decided  —  whichever  way  you 
like  to  put  it — "  to  go  to  the  relief  of  Isleta,"  where 
he  thought  his  lieutenant  was;  or  "to  retreat" 
south  of  the  Rio  Grande.  The  Indians  watched 
the  retreat  in  grim  silence.  The  Spanish  consid- 
ered their  escape  "  a  miracle.*'  It  was  a  pitiful 
wresting  of  comfort  from  desperation. 

But  at  Isleta,  the  Governor  found  that  his 
lieutenant  had  already  retreated  taking  1,500 
refugees  in  safety  with  him.  It  was  the  end  of 
September  when  Otermin  himself  crossed  the  Rio 
Grande,  at  a  point  not  far  from  modern  El  Paso. 
At  Isleta,  the  people  will  tell  you  to  this  day  legends 


THE  GOVERNOR'S  PALACE         179 

of  the  friar's  martyrdom.  Every  Mexican  believes 
that  the  holy  padre  buried  in  a  log  hollowed  out  for 
coffin  beneath  the  chapel  rises  every  ten  years  and 
walks  through  the  streets  of  Isleta  to  see  how  his 
people  are  doing.  Once  every  ten  years  or  so,  the 
Rio  Grande  floods  badly;  and  the  year  of  the  flood, 
the  ghost  of  the  friar  rises  to  warn  his  people.  Be 
that  as  it  may,  a  few  years  ago,  a  deputation  of 
investigators  took  up  the  body  to  examine  the  truth 
of  the  legend.  It  lies  in  a  state  of  perfect  preserva- 
tion in  its  log  coffin. 

The  pueblos  had  driven  the  Spanish  south  of  the 
Rio  Grande  and  practically  kept  them  south  of  the 
Rio  Grande  for  ten  years.  Churches  were  burned. 
Images  were  profaned.  Priestly  vestments  decked 
wild  Indian  lads.  Converts  were  washed  in  Santa 
Fe  River  to  cleanse  them  of  baptism.  All  the 
records  in  the  Governor's  Palace  were  destroyed, 
and  the  Palace  itself  given  over  to  wild  orgies 
among  the  victorious  Indians;  but  the  victory 
brought  little  good  to  the  tribes.  They  fell  back 
to  their  former  state  of  tribal  raid  and  feud. 
Drought  spoiled  the  crops;  and  perhaps,  after  all, 
the  consolation  and  the  guidance  of  the  Spanish 
priests  were  missed.  When  the  Utes  heard  that  the 
Spanish  had  retreated,  these  wild  marauders  of  the 
northern  desert  fell  on  the  pueblo  towns  like  wolves. 
There  is  a  legend,  also,  that  at  this  time  there  were 
great  earthquakes  and  many  heavenly  signs  of  dis- 
pleasure. Curiously  enough,  the  same  legends  exist 
about  Montreal  and  Quebec.  Otermin  hung  tim- 


1 80        THE  GOVERNOR'S  PALACE 

idly  on  the  frontier,  crossing  and  recrossing  the  Rio 
Grande;  but  he  could  make  no  progress  in  re- 
settling the  colonists. 

Comes  on  the  scene  now —  1692-98  —  Don 
Diego  de  Vargas.  It  isn't  so  much  what  he  did;  for 
when  you  are  brave  enough,  you  don't  need  to  do. 
The  doors  of  fate  open  before  the  golden  key.  He 
resubjugated  the  Southwest  for  Spain;  and  he  re- 
subjugated  it  as  much  by  force  of  clemency  as  force 
of  cruelty.  But  mark  the  point  —  it  was  force  that 
did  it,  not  pow-wowing  and  parleying  and  straddling 
cowardice  with  conscience.  De  Vargas  could  muster 
only  300  men  at  El  Paso,  including  loyal  Indians. 
On  August  21,  1692,  he  set  out  for  the  north. 

It  has  taken  many  volumes  to  tell  of  the  victories 
of  Frontenac.  It  would  take  as  many  again  to  re- 
late the  victories  of  De  Vargas.  He  was  accom- 
panied, of  course,  by  the  fearless  and  quenchless 
friars.  All  the  pueblos  passed  on  the  way  north 
he  found  abandoned;  but  when  he  reached  Santa 
Fe  on  the  i3th  of  September,  he  found  it  held  and 
fortified  by  the  Indians.  The  Indians  were  furi- 
ously defiant;  they  would  perish,  but  surrender  — 
never!  De  Vargas  surrounded  them  and  cut  off 
the  water  supply.  The  friars  approached  under 
flag  of  truce.  Before  night,  Santa  Fe  had  sur- 
rendered without  striking  a  blow.  One  after 
another,  the  pueblos  were  visited  and  pacified;  but 
it  was  not  all  easy  victory.  The  Indians  did  not 
relish  an  order  a  year  later  to  give  up  occupation 
of  the  Palace  and  retire  to  their  own  villages.  In 


THE  GOVERNOR'S  PALACE         181 

December  they  closed  all  entrances  to  the  Plaza  and 
refused  to  surrender.  De  Vargas  had  prayers  read, 
raised  the  picture  of  the  Virgin  on  the  battle  flag, 
and  advanced.  Javelins,  boiling  water,  arrows,  as- 
sailed the  advancing  Spaniards;  but  the  gate  of  the 
Plaza  stockade  was  attacked  and  burned.  Rein- 
forcements came  to  the  Indians,  and  both  sides  rested 
for  the  night.  During  the  night,  the  Indian  gov- 
ernor hanged  himself.  Next  morning,  seventy  of 
the  Indians  were  seized  and  court-martialed  on  the 
spot.  De  Vargas  planted  his  flag  on  the  Plaza, 
erected  a  cross  and  thanked  God. 

One  of  the  hardest  fights  of  '94  was  out  on  the 
Black  Mesa,  a  huge  precipitous  square  of  basalt, 
frowning  above  San  Ildefonso.  This  mesa  was  a 
famous  prayer  shrine  to  the  Indians  and  is  venerated 
as  sacred  to  this  day.  All  sides  are  sheer  but  that 
towards  the  river.  Down  this  is  a  narrow  trail  like 
a  goat  path  between  rocks  that  could  be  hurled  on 
climbers'  heads.  De  Vargas  stormed  the  Black 
Mesa,  on  top  of  which  great  numbers  of  rebels  had 
taken  refuge.  Four  days  the  attack  lasted,  his  100 
soldiers  repeatedly  reaching  the  edge  of  the  summit 
only  to  be  hurled  down.  After  ten  days  the  siege 
had  to  be  abandoned,  but  famine  had  done  its  work 
among  the  Indians.  For  five  years,  the  old  general 
slept  in  his  boots  and  scarcely  left  the  warpath.  It 
was  at  the  siege  of  the  Black  Mesa  that  he  is  said 
to  have  made  the  vow  to  build  a  chapel  to  the  Vir- 
gin; and  it  is  his  siege  of  Sante  Fe  that  the  yearly 
De  Vargas  Celebration  commemorates  to  this  day. 


1 82        THE  GOVERNOR'S  PALACE 

And  in  the  end,  he  died  in  his  boots  on  the  march  at 
Bernalillo,  leaving  in  his  will  explicit  directions  that 
he  should  be  buried  in  the  church  of  Santa  Fe 
"  under  the  high  altar  beneath  the  place  where  the 
priest  puts  his  feet  when  he  says  mass."  The  body 
was  carried  to  the  parish  church  in  his  bed  of  state 
and  interred  beneath  the  altar;  and  the  De  Vargas 
celebration  remains  to  this  day  one  of  the  quaintest 
ceremonies  of  the  old  Governor's  Palace. 


CHAPTER  XI 

TAGS,  THE  PROMISED  LAND  AND  ANCIENT  CAPITAL 
OF   THE    SOUTHWEST 

AS  Quebec  is  the  shrine  of  historical  pilgrims 
in  the  North,  and  Salem  in  New  England; 
so  Taos  is  the  Mecca  of  students  of  history 
and  lovers  of  art  in  the  Southwest.  Here  came  the 
Spanish  knights  mounted  and  in  armor  plate  half  a 
century  before  the  landing  of  the  Pilgrims  on 
Plymouth  Rock.  They  had  not  only  crossed  the 
sea  but  had  traversed  the  desert  from  Old  Mexico 
for  900  miles  over  burning  sands,  amid  wild,  bare 
mountains,  across  rivers  where  horses  and  riders 
swamped  in  the  quicksands.  To  Taos  came  Fran- 
ciscan padres  long  before  Champlain  had  built  stock- 
ades at  Port  Royal  or  Quebec.  Just  as  the  Jesuits 
won  the  wilderness  of  the  up-country  by  martyr 
blood,  so  the  Franciscans  attacked  the  strongholds 
of  paganism  amid  the  pueblos  of  the  South. 
Spanish  conquistadores  have  been  represented  as 
wading  through  blood  to  victory,  with  the  sword  in 
one  hand,  the  cross  in  the  other;  but  that  picture  is 
only  half  the  truth.  Let  it  be  remembered  that  the 
Spanish  were  the  only  conquerors  in  America  who 
gave  the  Indians  perpetual  title,  intact  and  forever, 
to  the  land  occupied  when  the  Spanish  came  — 

183 


i84      TAGS,  THE  PROMISED  LAND 

which  titles  the  Indians  hold  to  this  day.  Also, 
while  rude  soldiers,  or  even  officers,  might  be  guilty 
of  such  unprovoked  attacks  as  occurred  at  Bernalillo 
in  Coronado's  expedition  of  1540,  the  crown  stood 
sponsor  for  the  well-being  and  salvation  of  the  In- 
dian's soul.  Wherever  the  conqueror  marched,  the 
sandaled  and  penniless  Franciscan  remained  and  too 
often  paid  the  penalty  of  the  soldier's  crimes.  In 
the  Tusayan  Desert,  at  Taos,  at  Zufii,  at  Acoma, 
you  will  find  Missions  that  date  back  to  the  expedi- 
tion of  Coronado;  and  at  every  single  Mission  the 
padres  paid  for  their  courage  and  their  faith  with 
their  lives. 

But  Taos  traditions  date  back  farther  than  the  com- 
ing of  the  white  man.  Christians  have  their  Christ, 
northern  Indians  their  Hiawatha,  and  the  pueblo 
people  their  Bah-tah-ko,  or  grand  cacique,  who  led 
their  people  from  the  ravages  of  Apache  and  Navajo 
in  the  far  West  to  the  Promised  Land  of  verdant 
plains  and  watered  valleys  below  the  mighty  moun- 
tains of  Taos.  Montezuma  was  to  the  Southwest, 
not  the  Christ,  but  the  Adam,  the  Moses,  the 
Joseph.  Casa  Grande  in  southern  Arizona  was  the 
Garden  of  Eden,  "  the  place  of  the  Morning  Glow;  " 
but  when  waj  and  pestilence  and  ravaging  foe  and 
drouth  drove  the  pueblos  from  their  Garden  of 
Eden,  the  Bah-tah-ko  was  the  Moses  to  lead  them 
to  the  Promised  Land  at  Taos.  When  did  he  live? 
The  oldest  man  does  not  know.  The  pueblos  had 
been  at  Taos  thousands  of  years,  when  the  Spanish 
came  in  1540;  and,  it  may  be  added,  they  live  very 


TAGS,  THE  PROMISED  LAND       185 

much  the  same  to-day  at  Taos  as  they  did  when  the 
white  man  first  came.  The  men  wear  store  trousers 
instead  of  woven  linen  ones;  some  wear  hats  instead 
of  a  red  head  band;  and  there  are  wagons  instead  of 
drags  attached  to  a  dog  in  shafts.  But  apart  from 
these  innovations,  there  is  little  difference  at  Taos 
between  1912  and  1540.  The  whitewashed  Mis- 
sion church  stands  in  the  center  of  the  pueblo;  but 
the  old  estufas,  or  kivas,  are  still  used  for  religious 
ceremony,  and  election  of  rulers,  and  maintenance 
of  Indian  law.  You  can  still  see  the  Indians  thresh- 
ing their  grain  by  the  trampling  of  goats  on  a 
threshing  floor,  or  the  run  of  burros  round  and 
round  a  kraal  chased  by  a  boy,  while  a  man  scrapes 
away  the  grain  and  forks  aside  the  chaff.  There 
are  white  man's  courts  and  white  man's  laws,  down 
at  the  white  man's  town  of  Taos;  but  the  Indian  has 
little  faith  in,  and  less  respect  for,  these  white  man 
courts  and  laws,  and  out  at  Taos  has  his  own  court, 
his  own  laws,  his  own  absolute  and  undisputed  gov- 
ernor, his  own  police,  his  own  prison  and  his  own 
penalties.  The  wealth  of  Midas  would  not  tempt 
a  Taos  Indian  to  exchange  his  life  in  the  tiered 
adobe  villages  for  all  that  civilization  could  offer 
him.  Occasionally  a  Colonel  Cody,  or  Showman 
Jones,  lures  him  off  for  a  year  or  two  to  the  great 
cities  of  the  East;  but  the  call  of  the  wilds  lures  him 
back  to  his  own  beehive  houses.  He  has  plenty  to 
eat  and  plenty  to  wear,  the  love  of  his  family,  the 
open  fields  and  the  friendship  of  his  gods  —  what 
more  can  life  offer? 


1 86      TAGS,  THE  PROMISED  LAND 

Don't  leave  the  Southwest  without  seeing  Taos. 
It  might  be  part  of  Turkey,  or  Persia,  or  India.  It 
is  the  most  un-American  thing  in  America;  and  yet, 
it  is  the  most  typical  of  those  ancient  days  in 
America,  when  there  was  no  white  man.  Just  here, 
before  the  ethnologist  arises  to  correct  me,  let  it  be 
put  on  record  that  the  Taos  people  do  not  consider 
themselves  Indians.  They  claim  descent  rather 
from  the  Aztecs,  or  Toltecs  of  the  South.  While 
the  Navajo  and  Apache  and  Ute  legends  are  of  a 
great  migration  from  Athabasca  of  the  North,  the 
pueblo  legend  is  of  a  coming  from  the  Great  Under- 
world of  the  South. 

The  easiest  way  to  reach  Taos  is  by  the  ancient 
city  of  Santa  Fe.  You  go  by  rail  to  Servilleta,  or 
Barrancas,  then  stage  it  out  to  the  Indian  pueblos. 
Better  wire  for  your  stage  accommodation  from  the 
railroad.  We  did  not  wire,  and  when  we  left  the 
railroad,  we  found  seven  people  and  a  stage  with 
space  for  only  four.  The  railroad  leads  almost 
straight  north  from  Santa  Fe  over  high,  clear  mesas 
of  yellow  ocher  covered  with  scrub  juniper.  There 
is  little  sign  of  water  after  you  leave  the  Rio  Grande, 
for  water  does  not  flow  uphill;  and  you  are  at  an 
altitude  of  8,000  feet  when  you  cross  the  Divide. 
You  pass  through  fruit  orchards  along  the  river,  low 
headed  and  heavy  with  apples.  Then  come  the  In- 
dian villages,  San  Ildefonso,  and  Espanola,  and 
Santa  Clara,  where  the  strings  of  red  chile  bake  in 
the  sunlight  against  the  glare  adobe.  Women  go 


TAGS,  THE  PROMISED  LAND       187 

up  from  the  pools  with  jars  of  water  on  their  heads. 
Children  come  selling  the  famous  Santa  Clara  black 
pottery  at  the  train  windows;  and  on  the  trail  across 
the  river,  you  see  Mexican  drovers  with  long  lines 
of  burros  and  pack  horses  winding  away  into  the 
mountains.  Women  and  girls  in  bright  blankets 
and  with  eyes  like  black  beads  and  skin  like  wrinkled 
parchment  stand  round  the  doors  of  the  little  square 
adobe  houses;  and  sitting  in  the  shade  are  the  old 
people  —  people  of  a  great  age,  104  one  old  woman 
numbered  her  years.  As  you  ascend  the  Upper 
Mesas  of  the  Rio  Grande,  you  are  in  a  region  where 
nothing  grows  but  pifion  and  juniper.  There  is  not 
a  sign  of  life  but  the  browsing  sheep  and  goats. 
Just  where  the  train  shoots  in  north  of  San  Ildefonso, 
if  you  know  where  to  look  on  the  right,  you  can  see 
the  famous  Black  Mesa,  a  huge  square  of  black 
basaltic  rock  almost  400  feet  high,  which  was  the 
sacred  shrine  of  all  Indians  hereabouts  for  a  hun- 
dred miles.  On  its  crest,  you  can  still  see  its  prayer 
shrines,  and  the  footworn  path  where  refugees  from 
war  ran  down  to  the  river  for  water  from  encamp- 
ment on  the  crest.  Away  to  the  left,  the  moun- 
tains seem  to  crumple  up  in  purple  folds  with  flat 
tops  and  white  gypsum  gashed  precipices.  One  of 
these  gashes  —  White  Rock  Canon  —  marks  Paja- 
rito  Plateau,  the  habitat  of  the  ancient  cave 
dwellers.  On  the  north  side  of  the  Black  Mesa, 
you  can  see  the  opening  to  a  huge  cave.  This  was 
a  prayer  shrine  and  refuge  in  time  of  war  for  the 
Santa  Clara  Indians. 


1 88       TAOS,  THE  PROMISED  LAND 

Then,  when  you  have  reached  almost  the  top  of 
the  world  and  see  no  more  sheep  herds,  the  trains 
pull  up  at  an  isolated,  forsaken  little  station;  and 
late  in  the  afternoon  you  get  off  at  Servilleta. 

A  school  teacher,  his  wife  and  his  two  children, 
also  left  the  train  at  this  point.  Our  group  con- 
sisted of  three.  The  driver  of  the  stage  —  a 
famous  frontiersman,  Jo.  Dunn  —  made  eight;  and 
we  packed  into  a  two-seated  vehicle.  It  added 
piquancy,  if  not  sport,  to  the  twilight  drive  to  know 
that  one  of  the  two  bronchos  in  harness  had  never 
been  driven  before.  He  was,  in  fact,  one  of  the 
bands  of  wild  horses  that  rove  these  high  juniper 
mountains.  Mexicans,  or  Indians,  watch  for  the 
wild  bands  to  come  out  to  water  at  nightfall  and 
morning,  and  stampede  them  into  a  pound,  or  rope 
them.  The  captive  is  then  sold  for  amounts  vary- 
ing from  $5  to  $15  to  anyone  who  can  master  him. 
It  need  not  be  told  here,  not  every  driver  can  master 
an  unbroken  wild  horse.  It  is  a  combination  of 
confidence  and  dexterity,  rather  than  strength. 
There  is  a  rigging  to  the  bridle  that  throws  a  horse 
if  he  kicks;  and  our  wild  one  not  only  kept  his  traces 
for  a  rough  drive  of  nearly  twenty  miles  but  suf- 
fered himself  to  be  handled  by  a  young  girl  of  the 
party. 

Twilight  on  the  Upper  Mesas  is  a  thing  not  to 
be  told  in  words  and  only  dimly  told  on  canvas. 
There  is  the  primrose  afterglow,  so  famous  in  the 
Alps.  The  purple  mountains  drape  themselves  in 
lavender  veils.  Winds  scented  with  oil  of  sage- 


TAGS,  THE  PROMISED  LAND       189 

brush  and  aroma  of  pines  come  soughing  through 
the  juniper  hills.  The  moon  comes  out  sickle- 
shaped.  You  see  a  shooting  star  drop.  Then  a 
dim  white  group  of  moving  forms  emerges  from  the 
pines  of  the  mountains  —  wild  horses  with  leader 
scenting  the  air  for  foe,  coming  out  for  the  night 
run  to  the  drinking  pools.  Or  your  horses  give  a 
little  sidewise  jump  from  the  trail,  and  you  see  a 
coyote  loping  along  abreast  not  a  gun-shot  away. 
This  is  a  sure-enough-always-no-man's-land,  a  jump- 
ing-off  place  for  all  the  earth  —  too  high  for  irri- 
gation farming,  too  arid  for  any  other  kind  of  farm- 
ing, and  so  an  unclaimed  land.  In  the  twenty-mile 
drive,  you  will  see,  perhaps,  three  homesteaders' 
shanties,  where  settlers  have  fenced  off  a  square  and 
tried  ranching;  but  water  is  too  deep  for  boring. 
Horses  turned  outside  the  square  join  the  wild  bands 
and  are  lost;  and  two  out  of  every  three  are  aban- 
doned homesteads.  The  Dunn  brothers  have  cut 
a  road  in  eighteen  miles  to  the  Arroyo  Hondo, 
where  their  house  is,  halfway  to  Taos;  and  they 
have  also  run  a  telephone  line  in. 

Except  for  the  telephone  wires  and  the  rough 
trail,  you  might  be  in  an  utterly  uninhabited  land  on 
top  of  the  world.  The  trail  rises  and  falls  amid 
endless  scented  juniper  groves.  The  pale  moon 
deepens  through  a  pink  and  saffron  twilight.  The 
stillness  becomes  almost  palpable  —  then,  suddenly, 
you  jump  right  off  the  edge  of  the  earth.  The  flat 
mesa  has  come  to  an  edge.  You  look  down,  sheer 
down,  1,000  feet  straight  as  a  plummet  —  two 


TAGS,  THE  PROMISED  LAND 

canons  narrow  as  a  stone's  toss  have  gashed  deep 
trenches  through  the  living  rocks  and  with  a  whir 
of  swift  waters  come  together  at  the  famous  place 
known  as  the  Bridge.  You  have  come  on  your  old 
friend  the  Rio  Grande  again,  narrow  and  deep  and 
blue  from  the  mountain  snows,  an  altogether  dif- 
ferent stream  from  the  muddy  Rio  of  the  lower 
levels.  Here  it  is  joined  by  the  Arroyo  Hondo, 
another  canon  slashed  through  the  rocks  in  a  deep 
trench  —  both  rivers  silver  in  the  moonlight,  with  a 
rush  of  rapids  coming  up  the  great  height  like  wind 
in  trees,  or  the  waves  of  the  sea. 

What  a  host  of  old  frontier  worthies  must  have 
pulled  themselves  up  with  a  jerk  of  amaze  and  dumb 
wonder,  when  they  first  came  to  this  sheer  jump  off 
the  earth!  First  the  mailed  warriors  under  Cor- 
onado;  then  the  cowled  Franciscans;  then  Fremont 
and  Kit  Carson  and  Beaubien  and  Governor  Bent 
and  Manuel  Lisa,  the  fur  trader,  and  a  host  of  other 
knights  of  modern  adventure. 

I  suppose  a  proper  picture  of  the  Bridge,  or 
Arroyo  Hondo,  cannot  be  taken;  for  a  good  one 
never  has  been  taken,  though  travelers  and  artists 
have  been  coming  this  way  for  a  hundred  years. 
The  two  canons  are  so  close  together  and  so  walled 
that  it  is  impossible  to  get  both  in  one  picture  ex- 
cept from  an  airship.  It  is  as  if  the  earth  were 
suddenly  rent,  and  you  looked  down  on  that  under- 
world of  which  Indian  legend  tells  so  many  wonder 
yarns.  Don't  mind  wondering  how  you  will  go 
down!  The  bronchos  will  manage  that,  where  an 


TAGS,  THE  PROMISED  LAND       191 

Eastern  horse  would  break  his  neck  and  yours,  too. 
The  driver  jams  on  brakes;  and  you  drop  down  a 
terribly  steep  grade  in  a  series  of  switchbacks,  or 
zigzags,  to  the  Bridge.  It  is  the  most  spectacularly 
steep  road  I  know  in  America.  It  could  not  be  any 
steeper  and  not  drop  straight;  and  there  isn't  any- 
thing between  you  and  the  drop  but  your  horses' 
good  sense.  It  is  one  of  the  places  where  you  don't 
want  to  hit  your  horse;  for  if  he  jumps,  the  wagon 
will  not  keep  to  the  trail.  It  will  go  over  taking 
you  and  the  horse,  too. 

But,  before  you  know  it,  you  have  switched  round 
the  last  turn  and  are  rattling  across  the  Bridge. 
Some  Mexican  teamsters  are  in  camp  below  the  rock 
wall  of  the  river.  The  reflection  of  the  figures  and 
firelight  and  precipices  in  the  deep  waters  calls  up 
all  sorts  of  tales  of  Arabian  Nights  and  road  rob- 
bers and  old  lawless  days.  Then,  you  pull  up  sharp 
at  the  toll  house  for  supper,  as  quaint  an  inn  as  any- 
thing in  Switzerland  or  the  Himalayas.  The  back 
of  the  house  is  the  rock  wall  of  the  canon.  The 
front  is  adobe.  The  halls  are  long  and  low  and 
narrow,  with  low-roofed  rooms  off  the  front  side 
only.  From  the  Bridge  you  can  go  on  to  Taos  by 
motor  in  moonlight;  but  the  whole  way  by  stage 
and  motor  in  one  day  makes  a  hard  trip,  and  there 
is  as  much  of  interest  at  the  Bridge  as  at  Taos. 
You  don't  expect  to  find  settlers  in  this  dim  silver 
underworld,  do  you?  Well,  drive  a  few  miles  up 
the  Arroyo  Hondo,  where  the  stream  widens  out 
into  garden  patch  farms,  and  you  will  find  as  odd 


192      TAGS,  THE  PROMISED  LAND 

specimens  of  isolated  humans  as  exist  anywhere  in 
the  world  — •  relics  of  the  religious  fanaticism  of 
the  secret  lodges,  of  the  Middle  Ages  —  Penitentes, 
or  Flagellantes,  or  Crucifixion  people,  who  yearly 
at  Lent  re-enact  all  the  sorrows  of  the  Procession 
to  the  Cross,  and  until  very  recent  years  even  re- 
enacted  the  Crucifixion. 

After  supper  we  strolled  out  down  the  canon. 
It  is  impossible  to  exaggerate  its  beauty.  Each  gash 
is  only  the  width  of  the  river  with  sides  straight 
as  walls.  The  walls  are  yellow  and  black  basalt, 
all  spotted  with  red  where  the  burning  bush  has 
been  touched  by  the  frosts.  The  rivers  are  clear, 
cold  blue,  because  they  are  but  a  little  way  from 
the  springs  in  the  snows.  Snows  and  clear  water 
and  frost  in  the  Desert?  Yes:  that  is  as  the  Desert 
is  in  reality,  not  in  geography  books.  Below  the 
Bridge,  you  can  follow  the  Rio  Grande  down  to 
some  famous  hot  springs;  and  in  this  section,  the 
air  is  literally  spicy  with  the  oil  of  sagebrush.  At 
daybreak,  you  see  the  water  ousels  singing  above 
the  rapids,  and  you  may  catch  the  lilt  of  a  mocking- 
bird, or  see  a  bluebird  examining  some  frost-touched 
berries.  It  is  October;  but  the  goldfinches,  which 
have  long  since  left  us  in  the  North,  are  in  myriads 
here. 

The  second  day  at  the  Bridge,  we  drove  up  the 
Arroyo  Hondo  to  see  the  Penitentes.  It  is  the  only 
way  I  know  that  you  can  personally  visit  a  people 
who  in  every  characteristic  belong  to  the  Twelfth 
Century.  The  houses  of  the  Arroyo  Hondo  are 


TAGS,  THE  PROMISED  LAND       193 

very  small  and  very  poor;  for  the  Penitente  is  think- 
ing not  of  this  world  but  of  the  world  to  come. 
The  orchards  are  amazingly  old.  These  people 
and  their  ancestors  must  have  been  here  for  centuries 
and  as  isolated  from  the  rest  of  the  world  as  if 
living  back  five  centuries.  The  Penitente  is  not  an 
Indian;  he  is  a  peon.  Pueblo  Indians  repudiate 
Penitente  practices.  Neither  is  the  Penitente  a 
Catholic.  He  is  really  a  relic  of  the  secret  lodge 
orders  that  overran  Europe  with  religious  disorders 
and  fanatic  practices  in  the  Twelfth  Century.  Ex- 
cept for  the  Lenten  processions,  rites  are  practiced 
at  night.  There  are  the  Brothers  of  the  Light  — 
La  Luz  —  and  the  Brothers  of  the  Darkness  —  Las 
Tinieblas.  The  meeting  halls  are  known  as  Mora- 
dos;  and  those  seen  by  us  were  without  windows 
and  with  only  one  narrow  door.  Women  meet  in 
one  lodge,  men  in  another.  The  sign  manual  of 
membership  is  a  cross  tattooed  on  forehead,  chin  or 
back.  When  a  death  occurs,  the  body  is  taken  to 
the  Morado,  and  a  wake  held.  After  Penitente 
rites  have  been  performed,  a  priest  is  called  in  for 
final  services;  and  up  to  the  present,  the  priests  have 
been  unable  to  break  the  strength  of  these  secret 
lodges.  Members  are  bound  by  secret  oath  to  help 
each  other  and  stand  by  each  other;  and  it  is  com- 
monly charged  that  politicians  join  the  Penitentes 
to  get  votes  and  doctors  to  get  patients.  Easter 
and  Lent  mark  the  grand  rally  of  the  year.  On  one 
hill  above  the  Arroyo  Hondo,  you  can  see  a  suc- 
cession of  crosses  where  Penitentes  have  whipped 


194      TAGS,  THE  PROMISED  LAND 

themselves  senseless  with  cactus  belts,  or  dropped 
from  exhaustion  carrying  a  cross;  and  only  last 
spring — 1912  —  a  woman  marched  carrying  a 
great  cross  to  which  the  naked  body  of  her  baby 
was  bound.  We  passed  one  cross  erected  to  com- 
memorate a  woman  who  died  from  self-inflicted  in- 
juries suffered  during  the  procession  of  1907. 

The  procession  emerges  from  the  Morado  chanting 
in  low,  doleful  tune  the  Miserere.  First  come  the 
Flagellantes,  or  marchers,  scourging  their  naked 
backs  with  cactus  belts  and  whips.  Next  march  the 
cross  carriers  with  a  rattling  of  iron  chains  fastened 
to  the  feet;  then,  the  general  congregation.  The 
march  terminates  at  a  great  cross  erected  on  a  hilltop 
to  simulate  Golgotha.  Why  do  the  people  do  it? 
"To  appease  divine  wrath,"  they  say;  but  they 
might  ask  us  —  why  have  we  dipsomaniacs  and 
kleptomaniacs  and  monstrosities  in  our  civilized  life? 
Because  "  Julia  O'Grady  and  the  Captain's  lady 
are  the  same  as  two  pins  under  their  skins."  Be- 
cause human  nature  dammed  up  from  wholesome 
outlet  of  emotions,  will  find  unwholesome  vent;  and 
these  dolorous  processions  are  only  a  reflex  of  the 
dark  emotions  hidden  in  a  narrow  canon  shut  off 
from  the  rest  of  the  world. 

They  were  not  dolorous  emotions  that  found  vent 
as  we  drove  back  down  Arroyo  Hondo  to  the  Bridge. 
Our  driver  got  out  a  mouth  organ.  Then  he  played 
and  sang  snatches  of  dance  tunes  of  the  old,  old  days 
in  the  True  West. 


TAGS,  THE  PROMISED  LAND       195 

"  Allamahoo,  right  hand  to  your  partner 
And  grand  hodoo." 

"  Watch  your  partner  and  watch  her  close ; 
And  when  you  catch  her,  a  double  doze." 

"  The  cock  flies  out  and  the  hen  flies  in  — 
All  hands  round  and  go  it  agen." 

In  fact,  if  you  want  to  find  the  old  True  West, 
you'll  find  it  undiluted  and  pristine  on  the  trip  to 
Taos. 


CHAPTER  XII 

TAGS,    THE   MOST   ANCIENT    CITY    IN   AMERICA 

TAOS,  Santa  Fe  and  El  Paso  —  these  were  to 
the  Southwest  what  Port  Royal,  Quebec  and 
Montreal  were  to  French  Canada,  or  Bos- 
ton, Salem  and  Jamestown  to  the  colonists  of  the 
pre-Revolutionary  days  on  the  Atlantic.     El  Paso 
was  the  gateway  city  from  the  old  Spanish  Domin- 
ions of  the  South.     Santa  Fe  was  the  central  mili- 
tary post,  and  Taos  was  the  watch  tower  on  the 
very  outskirts  of  the  back-of-beyond  of  Spanish  ter- 
ritory in  the  wilderness  land  of  the  New  World. 

Before  Santa  Fe  became  the  terminus  of  the  trail 
for  American  traders  from  Missouri  and  Kansas, 
Taos  was  the  terminus  of  the  old  fur  trader  trail, 
in  the  days  when  Louisiana  extended  from  New  Or- 
leans to  Oregon.  Here,  such  famous  frontiersmen 
as  Jim  Bridgar  and  Manuel  Lisa  and  Jedediah  Smith 
and  Colonel  Ashley  and  Kit  Carson  came  to  barter 
beads  and  calico  and  tobacco  and  firewater  for  hides 
and  fur  and  native-woven  .blankets  and  turquoise  and 
rude  silver  ornaments  hammered  out  of  Spanish  bul- 
lion into  necklace  and  bracelet.  What  Green's  Hole 
and  the  Three  Tetons  were  to  the  Middle  West, 
Taos  was  to  the  Southwest.  Mountains  round  Taos 
rise  14,000  feet  from  sea  level.  Snow  glimmers 

196 


TAGS,  THE  MOST  ANCIENT  CITY     197 

from  the  peaks  more  than  half  the  year;  and  moun- 
tain torrents  water  the  valley  with  a  system  of  irriga- 
tion that  never  fails.  Coming  out  of  the  mountains 
from  the  north,  Taos  was  the  natural  halfway  house 
on  the  trail  south  to  Old  Mexico.  Coming  out  of 
the  Desert  from  the  south,  Taos  was  the  last  walled 
city  seen  before  the  plunge  into  the  wilderness  of 
forests  and  mountains  in  the  No-Man's-Land  of  the 
north.  "  Walled  city,"  you  say,  "  before  the  com- 
ing of  white  men  to  the  West?  "  Yes,  you  can 
see  those  very  walls  to-day,  walls  antedating  the 
coming  of  Coronado  in  1540  by  hundreds  of  years. 
No  motor  can  climb  up  and  down  the  steep  switch- 
back to  the  Arroyo  Hondo  of  the  Bridge.  Cars 
taken  over  that  trail  must  be  towed;  but  from  the 
Bridge,  you  can  go  on  to  Taos  by  motor.  As  you 
ascend  the  mesa  above  the  river  bed,  you  see  the 
mountains  ahead  rise  in  black  basalt  like  castellated 
walls,  with  tower  and  battlement  jagged  into  the 
very  clouds.  Patches  of  yellow  and  red  splotch  the 
bronzing  forests,  where  frost  has  touched  the  foli- 
age; and  you  haven't  gone  very  many  miles  into  the 
lilac  mist  of  the  morning  light  —  shimmering  as  it 
always  shimmers  above  the  sagebrush  blue  and  sandy 
gold  of  the  Upper  Mesas  —  before  you  hear  the 
laughter  of  living  waters  coming  down  from  the 
mountain  snows.  One  understands  why  the  Indians 
chose  the  uplands;  while  the  white  man,  who  came 
after,  had  to  choose  the  shadowy  bottoms  of  the 
walled-in  canons.  Someone,  back  in  the  good  old 
days  when  we  were  not  afraid  to  be  poetic,  said 


198    TAGS,  THE  MOST  ANCIENT  CITY 

something  about  "  traveling  on  the  wings  of  the 
morning."  I  can't  put  in  words  what  he  meant; 
but  you  do  it  here  —  going  up  and  up  so  gradually 
that  you  don't  realize  that  you  are  in  the  lap,  not 
of  mountains,  but  of  mountain  peaks;  breathing, 
not  air,  but  ozone;  uplifted  by  a  great  weight  being 
taken  off  spirit  and  body;  looking  at  life  through 
rose-colored  tints,  not  metaphorically,  but  really; 
for  there  is  something  in  this  high  rare  air  —  not 
dust,  not  moisture  —  that  splits  white  light  into  its 
seven  prismatic  hues.  You  look  through  an  atmos- 
phere wonderfully  rare,  but  it  is  never  clear,  white 
light.  It  is  lavender,  or  lilac,  or  primrose,  or  gold, 
or  red  as  blood  according  to  the  hours  and  the  mood 
of  hours;  and  if  you  want  to  carry  the  metaphor 
still  farther,  you  may  truthfully  add  that  the  hours 
on  these  high  uplands  are  dancing  hours.  You 
never  feel  time  to  be  a  heavy,  slow  thing  that  op- 
presses the  soul. 

As  the  streams  laugh  down  from  the  mountains, 
ranches  grow  more  and  more  frequent.  It  is  charac- 
teristic of  the  West  that  you  don't  cross  the  acequias 
on  bridges.  You  cross  them  on  two  planks,  with  risk 
to  your  car  if  the  driver  swerve  at  the  steering  wheel. 
All  the  houses  are  red  earth  adobe,  thick  of  wall  to 
shut  out  both  heat  and  cold,  with  a  smell  of  juniper 
wood  in  the  fireplaces  of  each  room.  Much  of  this 
land  —  nearly  all  of  it,  in  fact  —  is  owned  by  the 
Taos  Indians  and  held  in  common  for  pasturage  and 
cultivation.  Title  was  given  by  Spain  four  centu- 
ries ago,  and  the  same  title  holds  to-day  in  spite  of 


TAGS,  THE  MOST  ANCIENT  CITY     199 

white  squatters'  attempt  to  break  down  the  law  by 
cutting  the  wire  of  the  pasture  fences  and  taking  the 
case  to  the  courts.  It  was  in  this  way  that  squatters 
broke  down  the  title  of  old  Spanish  families  to  thou- 
sands and  hundreds  of  thousands  of  acres  granted 
before  American  occupation.  To  be  sure,  an  Amer- 
ican land  commission  took  evidence  on  these  titles, 
in  the  quarrel  between  Yankee  squatter  and  Spanish 
don;  but  the  squatter  had  "  friends  in  court."  The 
old  Spanish  don  hadn't.  He  saw  titles  that  had  held 
good  from  1540  slipping  from  his  neighbor's  hands; 
and  he  either  contested  the  case  to  lose  out  before 
he  had  begun,  or  sold  and  sold  at  a  song  to  save  the 
wreckage  of  his  fortunes.  Of  all  the  Spanish  land 
grants  originally  partitioning  off  what  is  now  New 
Mexico,  I  know  of  only  one  held  by  the  family  of 
the  original  grantee;  and  it  is  now  in  process  of  par- 
tition. It  is  an  untold  page  of  Southwestern  history, 
this  "  stampeding "  of  Spanish  titles.  Some  day, 
when  we  are  a  little  farther  away  from  it,  the  story 
will  be  told.  It  will  not  make  pleasant  reading,  nor 
afford  a  bill  of  health  to  some  family  fortunes  of  the 
Southwest.  Perjuries,  assassinations,  purchase  in  open 
markets  of  judges  drawing  such  small  pittances  that 
they  were  in  the  auction  mart  for  highest  bid,  forged 
documents,  incendiary  fires  to  destroy  true  titles  — 
these  were  the  least  and  most  decent  of  the  crimes  of 
this  era.  l<  Ramona  "  tells  what  happened  to  Indian 
titles  in  California.  Paint  Helen  Hunt  Jackson's 
colors  red  instead  of  gray;  multiply  the  crimes  by 
ten  instead  of  two;  and  you  have  a  faint  picture  of 


200    TAGS,  THE  MOST  ANCIENT  CITY 

the  land-jockey  period  of  New  Mexican  history. 
Something  of  this  sort  is  going  on  at  Taos  to-day 
among  the  pueblos  for  their  land,  and  down  at  Saca- 
ton  a-mong  the  Pimas  for  water.  Treaty  guaran- 
teed the  Indian  his  rights,  but  at  Taos  the  squatter 
cut  the  pueblo  fences  and  carried  the  case  to  court. 
At  Sacaton,  the  big  squatter,  the  irrigation  company, 
took  the  Pimas'  water;  so  that  the  Indian  can  no 
longer  raise  crops.  If  you  want  to  know  what  the 
courts  do  in  these  cases,  ask  the  pueblo  governor  at 
Taos ;  or  the  Pima  chief  at  Sacaton. 

It  is  late  September.  A  parrot  calls  out  in  Span- 
ish from  the  center  of  the  patio  where  our  rooms 
look  out  on  an  arcade  running  round  the  court  in  a 
perfect  square.  A  mocking-bird  trills  saucily  from 
his  cage  amid  the  cosmos  bloom.  Donkeys  and  bur- 
ros amble  past  the  rear  gate  with  loads  of  wood 
strapped  to  their  backs.  Your  back  window  looks 
out  on  the  courtyard.  Your  front  window  faces  the 
street  across  from  a  plaza,  or  city  square.  Stalwart, 
thick-set,  muscular  figures,  hair  banded  back  by  red 
and  white  scarfs,  trousers  of  a  loose,  white  pantaloon 
sort,  tunic  a  gray  or  white  blanket,  wrapped  Arab 
fashion  from  shoulders  to  waist,  stalk  with  quick, 
nervous  tread  along  the  plaza;  for  it  is  the  feast  of 
Saint  Geronimo  presently.  The  whole  town  is  in 
festal  attire.  There  will  be  dancing  all  night  and 
all  day,  and  rude  theatricals,  and  horse  and  foot 
races;  and  the  plaza  is  agog  with  sightseers.  No, 
it  is  not  Persia;  and  it  is  not  Palestine;  and  it  is  not 


TAGS,  THE  MOST  ANCIENT  CITY    201 

Spain.  It  is  just  plain,  commonplace  America  out 
at  Taos  —  white  man's  Taos,  at  the  old  Columbia 
Hotel,  which  is  the  last  of  the  old-time  Spanish  inns. 

As  you  motor  into  the  town,  the  long  rows  of  great 
cottonwoods  and  poplars  attest  the  great  age  of  the 
place.  Through  windows  deep  set  in  adobe  case- 
ment and  flush  with  the  street,  you  catch  glimpses  of 
inner  patios  where  oleanders  and  roses  are  still  in 
bloom.  Then  you  see  the  roof  windows  of  artists' 
studios,  and  find  yourself  not  only  in  an  old  Spanish 
town  but  in  the  midst  of  a  modern  art  colony,  which 
has  been  called  into  being  by  the  unique  coloring, 
form  and  antiquity  of  life  in  the  Southwest.  A  few 
years  ago,  when  Lungren  and  Philips  and  Sharpe 
and  a  dozen  others  began  portraying  the  marvelous 
coloring  of  the  Southwestern  Desert  with  its  almost 
Arab  life,  the  public  refused  to  accept  such  spectacu- 
lar, un-American  work  as  true.  Such  pictures  were 
diligently  "  skied "  by  hanging  committees,  and  a 
few  hundred  dollars  was  deemed  a  good  price.  To- 
day, Southwestern  art  forms  a  school  by  itself;  and 
where  commissions  used  to  go  begging  at  hundreds 
of  dollars,  they  to-day  command  prices  of  thousands 
and  tens  of  thousands.  When  I  was  in  Taos,  one 
artist  was  filling  commissions  for  an  Eastern  col- 
lector that  would  mount  up  to  prices  paid  for  the 
best  work  of  Watts  and  Whistler.  It  is  a  brutal 
way  to  put  art  in  terms  of  the  dollar  bill;  but  it  is 
sometimes  the  only  way  to  make  a  people  realize 
there  are  prophets  in  our  own  country. 

Columbia  Hotel  is  really  one  of  the  famous  old 


202    TAGS,  THE  MOST  ANCIENT  CITY 

Spanish  mansions  occupying  almost  the  entire  side 
of  a  plaza  square.  From  its  street  entrance,  you 
can  see  down  the  little  alleyed  street  where  dwelt 
Kit  Carson  in  the  old  days.  His  old  home  is  almost 
a  wreck  to-day,  and  there  does  not  seem  to  be  the 
slightest  movement  to  convert  it  into  a  shrine  where 
the  hundreds  of  sightseers  who  come  to  the  Indian 
dances  could  brush  up  memories  of  old  frontier 
heroes.  There  are  really  only  four  streets  in  Taos, 
all  facing  the  Plaza  or  town  square.  Other  streets 
are  alleys  running  off  these,  and  when  you  see  a  no- 
tary's sign  out  as  "  alcalde,"  it  does  not  seem  so 
very  far  back  to  the  days  when  Spanish  dons  lounged 
round  the  Plaza  wearing  silk  capes  and  velvet  trou- 
sers and  buckled  shoes,  and  Spanish  conquistadores 
rode  past  armed  cap-a-pie,  and  Spanish  grand  dames 
stole  glances  at  the  outside  world  through  the  lattices 
of  the  mansion  houses.  In  some  of  these  old  Span- 
ish houses,  you  will  find  the  deep  casement  windows 
very  high  in  the  wall.  I  asked  a  descendant  of  one 
of  the  old  Spanish  families  why  that  was.  "  For 
protection,"  she  said. 

"  Indians?"  I  asked. 

"  No  —  Spanish  women  were  not  supposed  to  see, 
or  be  seen  by,  the  outside  world." 

The  pueblo  proper  lies  about  four  miles  out  from 
the  white  man's  town.  Laguna,  Acoma,  Zuni,  the 
Three  Mesas  of  the  Tusayan  Desert  —  all  lie  on 
hillsides,  or  on  the  very  crest  of  high  acclivities. 
Taos  is  the  exception  among  purely  Indian  pueblos. 
It  lies  in  the  lap  of  the  valley  among  the  mountains, 


TAGS,  THE  MOST  ANCIENT  CITY    203 

two  castellated,  five  story  adobe  structures,  one  on 
each  side  of  a  mountain  stream.  In  other  pueblo 
villages,  while  the  houses  may  adjoin  one  another 
like  stone  fronts  in  our  big  cities,  they  are  not  like 
huge  beehive  apartment  houses.  In  Taos,  the  houses 
are  practically  two  great  communal  dwellings,  with 
each  apartment  assigned  to  a  special  clan  or  family. 
In  all,  some  700  people  dwell  in  these  two  huge 
houses.  How  many  rooms  are  there?  Not  less 
than  an  average  of  three  to  each  family.  Remnants 
of  an  ancient  adobe  wall  surround  the  entire  pueblo. 
A  new  whitewashed  Mission  church  stands  in  the 
center  of  the  village,  but  you  can  still  see  the  old 
one  pitted  with  cannon-ball  and  bullet,  where  Gen- 
eral Price  shelled  it  in  the  uprising  of  the  pueblos 
after  American  occupation.  Men  wear  store  trou- 
sers and  store  hats.  You  see  some  modern  wagons. 
Except  for  these,  you  are  back  in  the  days  of  Coro- 
nado.  All  the  houses  can  be  entered  only  by 
ladders  that  ascend  to  the  roofs  and  can  be  drawn 
up  —  the  pueblo  way  of  bolting  the  door.  The 
houses  run  up  three,  four  and  five  stories.  They 
are  adobe  color  outside,  that  is  to  say,  a  pinkish 
gray;  and  whitewashed  spotlessly  inside.  Watch  a 
woman  draped  in  white  linen  blanket  ascending 
these  ladders,  and  you  have  to  convince  yourself  that 
you  are  not  in  the  Orient.  Down  by  the  stream, 
women  with  red  and  blue  and  white  shawls  over 
their  heads,  and  feet  encased  in  white  puttees,  are 
washing  blankets  by  beating  them  in  the  flowing 
water.  Go  up  the  succession  of  ladders  to  the  very 


204    TAGS,  THE  MOST  ANCIENT  CITY 

top  of  a  five  storied  house,  and  look  out.  You  can 
see  the  pasture  fields,  where  the  herds  graze  in  com- 
mon. On  the  outskirts  of  the  village,  men  and  boys 
are  threshing,  that  is  —  they  are  chasing  ponies 
round  and  round  inside  a  kraal,  with  a  flag  stuck 
up  to  show  which  way  the  wind  blows,  one  man  fork- 
ing chaff  with  the  wind,  another  scraping  the  grain 
outside  the  circle. 

Glance  inside  the  houses.  The  upstairs  is  evi- 
dently the  living-room;  for  the  fireplace  is  here, 
and  the  pot  is  on.  Off  the  living-room  are  corn  and 
meal  bins,  and  you  can  see  the  metate  or  stone  on 
which  the  corn  is  ground  by  the  women  as  in  the  days 
of  Old  Testament  record.  Though  there  is  a  new 
Mission  church  dating  from  the  uprising  in  the 
forties,  and  an  old  Mission  church  dating  almost 
from  1540,  you  can  see  from  the  roof  dozens  of 
es tufas,  where  the  men  are  practicing  for  their 
dances  and  masked  theatricals.  Tony,  the  assistant 
governor,  an  educated  man  of  about  forty  who  has 
traveled  with  Wild  West  shows,  acts  as  our  guide, 
and  tells  us  about  the  squatters  trying  to  get  the 
Indian  land.  How  would  you  like  an  intruder  to 
sit  down  in  the  middle  of  your  farm  and  fence  off 
1 60  acres?  The  Indians  didn't  like  it,  and  cut  the 
fences.  Then  the  troops  were  sent  out.  That  was 
in  1910  —  a  typical  "uprising,"  when  the  white 
man  has  both  troops  and  courts  on  his  side.  The 
case  has  gone  to  the  courts,  and  Tony  doesn't  expect 
it  to  be  settled  very  soon.  In  fact,  Tony  likes  their 
own  form  of  government  better  than  the  white  man's. 


TAGS,  THE  MOST  ANCIENT  CITY     205 

All  this  he  tells  you  in  the  softest,  coolest  voice,  for 
Tony  is  not  only  assistant  governor:  he  is  constable 
to  keep  white  men  from  bringing  in  liquor  during 
the  festal  week.  They  yearly  elect  their  own  gov- 
ernor. That  governor's  word  is  absolutely  supreme 
for  his  tenure  of  office.  Is  there  a  dispute  over 
crops,  or  cattle?  The  governor's  word  settles  it 
without  any  rigmarole  of  talk  by  lawyers. 

"  Supposing  the  guilty  man  doesn't  obey  the  gov- 
ernor? "  we  ask. 

*  Then  we  send  our  own  police,  and  take  him,  and 
put  him  in  the  stocks  in  the  lock-up,"  and  he  takes 
us  around  and  shows  us  both  the  stocks  and  the 
lock-up.  These  stocks  clamp  down  a  man's  head  as 
well  as  his  hands  and  feet.  A  man  with  his  neck 
and  hands  anchored  down  between  his  feet  in  a  black 
room  naturally  wouldn't  remain  disobedient  long. 

The  method  of  voting  is  older  than  the  white 
man's  ballot.  The  Indians  enter  the  estufa.  A 
mark  is  drawn  across  the  sand.  Two  men  are  nomi- 
nated. (No  —  women  do  not  vote ;  the  women  rule 
the  house  absolutely.  The  men  rule  fields  and  crops 
and  village  courtyard.)  The  voters  then  signify 
their  choice  by  marks  on  the  sand. 

Houses  are  built  and  occupied  communally,  and 
ground  is  held  in  common;  but  the  product  of  each 
man's  and  each  woman's  labor  is  his  or  her  own 
and  not  in  common  —  the  nearest  approach  to  so- 
cialistic life  that  America  has  yet  known.  The  peo- 
ple here  speak  a  language  different  from  the  other 
pueblos,  and  this  places  their  origin  almost  as  far 


206    TAGS,  THE  MOST  ANCIENT  CITY 

back  as  the  origin  of  Anglo-Saxon  races.  Another 
feature  sets  pueblo  races  apart  from  all  other  native 
races  of  America.  Though  these  people  have  been 
in  contact  with  whites  nearly  400  years,  intermarriage 
with  whites  is  almost  unknown.  Purity  of  blood  is 
almost  as  sacredly  guarded  among  Pueblos  as  among 
the  ancient  Jews.  The  population  remains  almost 
stationary;  but  the  bad  admixtures  of  a  mongrel  race 
are  unknown. 

We  call  the  head  man  of  the  pueblo  the  governor, 
but  the  Spanish  know  him  as  a  cacique.  Associated 
with  him  are  the  old  men  —  may  ores,  or  council; 
and  this  council  of  wise  old  men  enters  so  intimately 
into  the  lives  of  the  people  that  it  advises  the  young 
men  as  to  marriage.  We  have  preachers  in  our 
religious  ranks.  The  Pueblos  have  proclaimers 
who  harangue  from  the  housetops,  or  estufas.  As 
women  stoop  over  the  metates  grinding  the  meal, 
men  sing  good  cheer  from  the  door.  The  chile, 
or  red  pepper,  is  pulverized  between  stones  the  same 
as  the  grain.  Though  openly  Catholic  and  in  at- 
tendance on  the  Mission  church,  the  pueblo  people 
still  practice  all  the  secret  rites  of  Montezuma;  and 
in  all  the  course  of  four  centuries  of  contact,  white 
men  have  never  been  able  to  learn  the  ceremonies 
of  the  estufas. 

Women  never  enter  the  estufas. 

Who  were  the  first  white  men  to  see  Taos?  It  is 
not  certainly  known,  but  it  is  vaguely  supposed  they 
were  Cabeza  de  Vaca  and  his  three  companions, 
shipwrecked  on  the  coast  of  Florida  in  the  Narvaez 


TAGS,  THE  MOST  ANCIENT  CITY    207 

expedition,  who  wandered  westward  across  the  con- 
tinent from  Taos  to  Laguna  and  Acoma.  As  the 
legend  runs,  they  were  made  slaves  by  the  Indians 
and  traded  from  tribe  to  tribe  from  1528  to  1536, 
when  they  reached  Old  Mexico.  Anyway,  their  re- 
port of  golden  cities  and  vast,  undiscovered  land 
pricked  New  Spain  into  launching  Coronado's  expe- 
dition of  1540.  Preceding  the  formal  military  ad- 
vance of  Coronado,  the  Franciscan  Fray  Marcos  de 
Niza  and  two  lay  brothers  guided  by  Cabeza  de 
Vaca's  negro  Estevan,  set  out  with  the  cross  in  their 
hands  to  prepare  the  way.  Fray  Marcos  advanced 
from  the  Gulf  of  California  eastward.  One  can 
guess  the  weary  hardship  of  that  footsore  journey- 
ing. It  was  made  between  March  and  September 
of  1539.  Go  into  the  Yuma  Valley  in  September! 
The  heat  is  of  a  denseness  you  can  cut  with  a  knife. 
Imagine  the  heat  of  that  tramp  over  desert  sands 
in  June,  July  and  August!  When  Fray  Marcos 
sent  his  Indian  guides  forward  to  Zuni,  near  the 
modern  Gallup,  he  was  met  with  the  warning  "  Go 
back;  or  you  will  be  put  to  death."  His  messengers 
refusing  to  be  daunted,  the  Zuni  people  promptly 
killed  them  and  threw  them  over  the  rocks.  Fray 
Marcos  went  on  with  the  lay  brothers.  Zuni  was 
called  "  clbola  "  owing  to  the  great  number  of  buf- 
falo skins  (cibolas)  in  camp. 

Fray  Marcos'  report  encouraged  the  Emperor  of 
Spain  to  go  on  with  Coronado's  expedition.  That 
trip  need  not  be  told  here.  It  has  been  told  and  re- 
told in  half  the  languages  of  the  world.  The  Span- 


208    TAGS,  THE  MOST  ANCIENT  CITY 

iards  set  out  from  Old  Mexico  300  strong,  with  800 
Indian  escorts  and  four  priests  including  Marcos 
and  a  lay  brother.  What  did  they  expect?  Prob- 
ably a  second  Peru,  temples  with  walls  of  gold  and 
images  draped  in  jewels  of  priceless  worth.  What 
did  they  find?  In  Zuni  and  the  Three  Mesas  and 
Taos,  small,  sun-baked  clay  houses  built  tier  on  tier 
on  top  of  each  other  like  a  child's  block  house,  with 
neither  precious  stones,  nor  metals  of  any  sort,  but 
only  an  abundance  of  hides  and  woven  cloth.  When 
the  soldiers  saw  Zuni,  they  broke  out  in  jeers  and 
curses  at  the  priest.  Poor  Fray  Marcos  was  think- 
ing more  of  souls  saved  from  perdition  than  of  loot, 
and  returned  in  shamed  embarrassment  to  New 
Spain. 

Across  the  Desert  to  the  Three  Mesas  and  the 
Canon  of  the  Colorado,  east  again  to  Acoma  and  the 
Enchanted  Mesa,  up  to  the  pueblo  town  now  known 
as  the  city  of  Santa  Fe,  into  the  Pecos,  and  north, 
yet  north  of  Taos,  Coronado's  expedition  practically 
made  a  circuit  of  all  the  Southwest  from  the  Colo- 
rado River  to  East  Kansas.  The  knightly  adven- 
turers did  not  find  gold,  and  we  may  guess,  as  winter 
came  on  with  heavy  snows  in  the  Upper  Desert, 
they  were  in  no  very  good  mood;  for  now  began 
that  contest  between  white  adventurers  and  Pueb- 
los which  lasted  down  to  the  middle  of  the  Nine- 
teenth Century.  At  the  pueblo  now  known  as 
Bernalillo,  the  soldiers  demanded  blankets  to  protect 
them  from  the  cold.  The  Indians  stripped  their 
houses  to  help  their  visitors,  but  in  the  melee  and  no 


A   fashionable  metal-worker  of   Taos,   New   Mexico,   who 
has   not   adhered   to   the   native  costume 


TAGS,  THE  MOST  ANCIENT  CITY     209 

doubt  in  the  ill  humor  of  both  sides  there  were  at- 
tacks and  insults  by  the  white  aggressors,  and  a  state 
of  siege  lasted  for  two  months.  Practically  from 
that  date  to  1840,  the  pueblo  towns  were  a  unit 
against  the  white  man. 

The  last  great  uprising  was  just  after  the  Ameri- 
can Occupation.  Bent,  the  great  trader  of  Bent's 
Fort  on  the  Arkansas,  was  governor.  Kit  Carson, 
who  had  run  away  from  the  saddler's  trade  at  six- 
teen and  for  whom  a  reward  of  one  cent  was  offered, 
had  joined  the  Santa  Fe  caravans  and  was  now  living 
at  Taos,  an  influential  man  among  the  Indians.  Ac- 
cording to  Col.  Twitchell,  whose  work  is  the  most 
complete  on  New  Mexico  and  who  received  the  ac- 
count direct  from  the  governor's  daughter,  Governor 
Bent  knew  that  danger  was  brewing.  The  Pueblos 
had  witnessed  Spanish  power  overthrown;  then,  the 
expulsion  of  Mexican  rule.  Why  should  they, 
themselves,  not  expel  American  domination? 

It  wac  January  18,  1847.  Governor  Bent  had 
come  up  from  Santa  Fe  to  visit  Taos.  He  was 
warned  to  go  back,  or  to  get  a  military  escort;  but 
a  trader  all  his  life  among  the  Indians,  be  flouted 
danger.  Traders'  rum  had  inflamed  the  Indians. 
They  had  crowded  in  from  their  pueblo  town  to  the 
plaza  of  Taos.  Insurrectionary  Mexicans,  who  had 
cause  enough  to  complain  of  the  American  policy 
regarding  Spanish  land  titles,  had  harangued  the 
Indians  into  a  flare  of  resentful  passion.  Governor 
Bent  and  his  family  were  in  bed  in  the  house  you 
can  see  over  to  the  left  of  the  Plaza.  In  the  kraal 


2io    TAGS,  THE  MOST  ANCIENT  CITY 

were  plenty  of  horses  for  escape,  but  the  family  were 
awakened  at  daybreak  by  a  rabble  crowding  into 
the  central  courtyard.  Kit  Carson's  wife,  Mrs. 
Bent,  Mrs.  Boggs  and  her  children  hurried  into  the 
shelter  of  an  inner  room.  Young  Alfredo  Bent, 
only  ten  years  old,  pulled  his  gun  from  the  rack 
with  the  words— "Papa,  let  us  fight;"  but  Bent 
had  gone  to  the  door  to  parley  with  the  leaders. 

Taking  advantage  of  the  check,  the  women  and  an 
Indian  slave  dug  a  hole  with  a  poker  and  spoon  un- 
der the  adobe  wall  of  the  room  into  the  next  house. 
Through  this  the  family  crawled  away  from  the  be- 
sieged room  to  the  next  house,  Mrs.  Bent  last,  call- 
ing for  her  husband  to  come;  but  it  was  too  late. 
Governor  Bent  was  shot  in  the  face  as  he  expostu- 
lated; clubbed  down  and  literally  scalped  alive.  He 
dragged  himself  across  the  floor,  to  follow  his  wife; 
but  Indians  came  up  through  the  hole  and  down  over 
the  roof  and  in  through  the  windows ;  and  Bent  fell 
dead  at  the  feet  of  his  family. 

The  family  were  left  prisoners  in  the  room  with- 
out food,  or  clothing  except  night  dresses,  all  that 
day  and  the  next  night.  At  daybreak  friendly  Mexi- 
cans brought  food,  and  the  women  were  taken  away 
disguised  as  squaws.  Once,  when  searching  Indians 
came  to  the  house  of  the  old  Mexican  who  had  shel- 
tered the  family,  the  rescuer  threw  the  searchers 
off  by  setting  his  "  squaws  "  to  grinding  meal  on 
the  kitchen  floor.  Kit  Carson,  at  this  time,  un- 
fortunately happened  to  be  in  California.  He  was 
the  one  man  who  could  have  re'strained  the  Indians. 


TAGS,  THE  MOST  ANCIENT  CITY     211 

The  Indians  then  proceeded  down  to  the  Arroyo 
Hondo  to  catch  some  mule  loads  of  whiskey  and  pro- 
visions, which  were  expected  through  the  narrow 
canon.  The  mill  where  the  mules  had  been  unhar- 
nessed was  surrounded  that  night  The  teamsters 
plugged  up  windows  and  loaded  for  the  fray  that 
must  come  with  daylight.  Seven  times  the  Indians 
attempted  to  rush  an  assault.  Each  time,  a  rifle 
shot  puffed  from  the  mill  and  an  Indian  leaped  into 
the  air  to  fall  back  dead.  Then  the  whole  body  of 
500  Indians  poured  a  simultaneous  volley  into  the 
mill.  Two  of  the  Americans  inside  fell  dead.  A 
third  was  severely  wounded.  By  the  afternoon  of 
the  second  day,  the  Americans  were  without  balls  or 
powder.  The  Indians  then  crept  up  and  set  fire  to 
the  mill.  The  Americans  hid  themselves  among  the 
stampeding  stock  of  the  kraal.  Night  was  coming 
on.  The  Pueblos  were  crowding  round  in  a  circle. 
The  surviving  Americans  opened  the  gates  and  made 
a  dash  in  the  dark  for  the  mountains.  Two  only  es- 
caped. The  rest  were  lanced  and  scalped  as  they 
ran;  and  in  the  loot  of  the  teams,  the  Indians  are 
supposed  to  have  secured  some  well-filled  chests  of 
gold  specie. 

By  January  23rd,  General  Price  had  marched  out 
at  the  head  of  five  companies,  from  old  Fort  Marcy 
at  Santa  Fe  for  Taos.  He  had  353  men  and  four 
cannon.  You  can  see  the  marks  yet  on  the  old  Mis- 
sion at  Taos,  where  the  cannon-balls  battered  down 
the  adobe  walls.  The  Indians  did  not  wait  his  com- 
ing. They  met  him  1,500  strong  on  the  heights  of  a 


212    TAGS,  THE  MOST  ANCIENT  CITY 

mesa  at  Santa  Cruz.  The  Indians  made  wild  efforts 
to  capture  the  wagons  to  the  rear  of  the  artillery; 
but  when  an  Indian  rabble  meets  artillery,  there  is 
only  one  possible  issue.  The  Indians  fled,  leaving 
thirty-six  killed  and  forty-five  wounded.  No  rail- 
way led  up  the  Rio  Grande  at  that  early  date;  and 
it  was  a  more  notable  feat  for  the  troops  to  advance 
up  the  narrowing  canons  than  to  defeat  the  foe.  At 
Embudo,  six  or  seven  hundred  Pueblos  lined  the  rock 
walls  under  hiding  of  cedar  and  pifion.  The  soldiers 
had  to  climb  to  shoot;  and  again  the  Indians  could 
not  withstand  trained  fire.  They  left  twenty  killed 
and  sixty  wounded  here.,  Two  feet  of  snow  lay  on 
the  trail  as  the  troops  ascended  the  uplands;  and  it 
was  February  3rd  before  they  reached  Taos.  Every 
ladder  had  been  drawn  up,  every  window  barricaded, 
and  the  high  walls  of  the  tiered  great  houses  were 
bristling  with  rifle  barrels ;  but  rifle  defense  could  not 
withstand  the  big  shells  of  the  assailants.  The  two 
pueblos  were  completely  surrounded.  A  six  pounder 
was  brought  within  ten  yards  of  the  walls.  A  shell 
was  fired  —  the  church  wall  battered  down,  and  the 
dragoons  rushed  through  the  breach.  By  the  night 
of  Feb.  4th,  old  men,  women  and  children  bearing 
the  cross  came  suing  for  peace.  The  ringleader, 
Tomas,  was  delivered  to  General  Price;  and  the 
troops  drew  off  with  a  loss  of  seven  killed  and  forty- 
five  wounded.  The  Pueblos  loss  was  not  less  than 
200.  Thus  ended  the  last  attempt  of  the  Pueblos 
to  overthrow  alien  domination;  and  this  attempt 
would  not  have  been  made  if  the  Indians  had  not 


TAGS,  THE  MOST  ANCIENT  CITY     213 

been  spurred  on  by  Mexican  revolutionaries,  with 
counter  plots  of  their  own. 

We  motored  away  from  Taos  by  sunset.  An  old 
Indian  woman  swathed  all  in  white  came  creeping 
down  one  of  the  upper  ladders.  They  could  not 
throw  off  white  rule  —  these  Pueblos  —  but  for  four 
centuries  they  have  withstood  white  influences  as 
completely  as  in  the  days  when  they  sent  the  couriers 
spurring  with  the  knotted  cord  to  rally  the  tribes  to 
open  revolt. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

SAN   ANTONIO,    THE    CAIRO   OF  AMERICA 

IF  you  want  to  plunge  into  America's  Egypt,  there 
are  as  many  ways  to  go  as  you  have  moods. 
You  explain  that  the  ocean  voyage  is  half  the 
attraction  to  European  travel.  There  may  be  a 
difference  of  opinion  on  that,  as  I  know  people  who 
would  like  to  believe  that  the  Atlantic  could  be 
bridged;  but  if  you  are  keen  on  an  ocean  voyage,  you 
can  reach  the  Egypt  of  America  by  boat  to  Florida, 
then  west  by  rail;  or  by  boat  straight  to  any  of  the 
Texas  harbors.  By  way  of  Florida,  you  can  take 
your  fill  of  the  historic  and  antique  and  the  pictur- 
esque in  St.  Augustine  and  Pensacola  and  New  Or- 
leans; and  if  there  are  any  yarns  of  rarer  flavor  in 
all  the  resorts  of  Europe  than  in  the  old  quarters  of 
these  three  places,  I  have  never  heard  of  them. 
You  can  drink  of  the  spring  of  the  elixir  of  life  in 
St.  Augustine,  and  lose  yourself  in  the  trenches  of 
old  Fort  Barrancas  at  Pensacola,  and  wander  at  will 
in  the  old  French  town  of  New  Orleans.  Each 
place  was  once  a  pawn  in  the  gambles  of  European 
statesmen.  Each  has  heard  the  clang  of  armed 
knights,  the  sword  in  one  hand,  the  cross  in  the 
other.  Each  has  seen  the  pirate  fleet  with  death's 
head  on  the  flag  at  the  masthead  come  tacking  up 

214 


SAN  ANTONIO  215 

the  bays,  sometimes  to  be  shattered  and  sunk  by 
cannon  shot  from  the  fort  bastions.  Sometimes  the 
fort  itself  was  scuttled  by  the  buccaneers;  once,  at 
least,  at  Fort  Barrancas,  it  suffered  loot  at  terrible, 
riotous,  drunken  hands,  when  a  Spanish  officer's 
daughter  who  was  captured  for  ransom  succeeded  in 
plunging  into  the  sea  within  sight  of  her  watching 
father. 

But  whether  you  enter  the  Egypt  of  America  by 
rail  overland,  or  by  sea,  San  Antonio  is  the  gate- 
way city  from  the  south  to  the  land  of  play  and 
mystery.  It  is  to  the  Middle  West  what  Quebec  is 
to  Canada,  what  Cairo  is  to  Egypt  —  the  gateway, 
the  meeting  place  of  old  and  new,  of  Latin  and 
Saxon,  of  East  and  West,  of  North  and  South.  At- 
mosphere? Physically,  the  atmosphere  is  cham- 
pagne :  spiritually,  you  have  not  gone  ten  paces  from 
the  station  before  you  feel  a  flavor  as  of  old  wine. 
There  are  the  open  Spanish  plazas  riotous  with 
bloom  flanked  by  Spanish-Moorish  ruins  flush  on  the 
pavement,  with  skyscraper  hotels  that  are  the  last 
word  in  modernity.  Live  oaks  heavy  with  Spanish 
moss  hang  over  sleepy  streams  that  come  from  every- 
where and  meander  nowhere.  You  see  a  squad  of 
soldiers  from  Fort  Sam  Houston  wheeling  in  meas- 
ured tread  around  a  square  (only  there  isn't  any- 
thing absolutely  square  in  all  San  Antonio)  and  they 
have  hardly  gone  striding  out  of  sight  before  you  see 
a  Mexican  burro  trotting  to  market  with  a  load  of 
hay  tied  on  its  back.  A  motor  comes  bumping  over 
the  roads  —  such  roads  as  only  the  antique  can  boast 


216  SAN  ANTONIO 

—  and  if  it  is  fiesta  time,  or  cowboy  celebration,  you 
are  apt  to  see  cowboys  cutting  such  figure  eights  in 
the  air  as  a  motor  cannot  execute  on  antique  pave- 
ment. 

You  enter  a  hotel  and  imagine  you  are  in  the 
Plaza,  New  York,  or  the  Ritz,  London;  but  stay! 
The  frieze  above  the  marble  walls  isn't  gilt;  and  it 
isn't  tapestry.  The  frieze  is  a  long  panel  in  bronze 
alto-relievo.  I  think  it  is  a  testimonial  to  San  An- 
tonio's sense  of  the  fitness  of  things  that  that  frieze 
is  not  of  Roman  gladiators,  or  French  gardens  with 
beringed  ladies  and  tame  fawns.  It  is  a  frieze  of 
the  cowboys  taking  a  stampeding  herd  up  the  long 
trail  —  drifting  and  driving  but  held  together  by  a: 
rough  fellow  in  top  boots  and  sombrero ;  and  the 
rotunda  has  a  frieze  of  cowboys  because  that  three- 
million-dollar  hotel  was  built  out  of  "  cow  "  money. 
Old  and  new,  past  and  present,  Saxon  and  Latin, 
North  and  South,  East  and  West  —  that  is  San  An- 
tonio. You  can  never  forget  it  for  a  minute.  It 
is  such  a  shifting  panorama  as  you  could  only  get 
from  traveling  thousands  of  miles  elsewhere,  or  com- 
paring a  hundred  Remington  drawings.  San  An- 
tonio is  a  curious  combination  of  Remington  and 
Alma  Tadema  in  real  life;  and  I  don't  know  any- 
where else  in  the  world  you  can  get  it.  There  are 
three  such  huge  hotels  in  San  Antonio  besides  a  score 
of  lesser  ones,  to  take  care  of  the  30,000  tourists 
who  come  from  the  Middle  West  to  winter  in  San 
Antonio;  but  remember  that  while  30,000  seems  a 
large  number  of  tourists  for  one  place,  that  is  only 


SAN  ANTONIO  217 

one-tenth  the  number  of  Americans  who  yearly  see 
Europe. 

And  never  for  a  moment  can  you  forget  that  as 
Cairo  is  the  gateway  to  Eastern  travel,  so  San  An- 
tonio is  on  the  road  to  Old  Mexico  and  all  the  for- 
mer Spanish  possessions  of  the  South.  It  was  here 
that  Madero's  band  of  revolutionists  lived  and  laid 
the  plans  that  overthrew  Diaz.  Long  ago,  before 
the  days  of  railway,  it  was  here  that  the  long  cara- 
vans of  mule  trains  used  to  come  with,  silver  and 
gold  from  the  mines  of  Old  Mexico.  It  was  here 
the  highwaymen  and  roughs  and  toughs  and  scum  of 
the  earth  used  to  lie  in  wait  for  the  passing  bullion; 
and  it  was  here  the  Texas  Rangers  came  with  short, 
quick,  sharp  shrift  for  rustlers  and  robbers.  There 
is  one  corner  in  San  Antonio  where  you  can  see  a 
Mission  dating  back  to  the  early  seventeen  hundreds, 
and  not  a  stone's  throw  away,  one  of  the  most  fa- 
mous gambling  joints  of  the  wildest  days  of  the  wild 
Southwest  —  the  site  of  the  old  Silver  King,  where 
cowboys  and  miners  from  the  South  used  to  come  in 
"  to  clean  out "  their  earnings  of  a  year,  sometimes 
to  ride  horses  over  faro  tables,  or  pot-shot  rows  of 
champagne.  A  man  had  "  to  smile  "  when  he  called 
his  "  pardner "  pet  names  in  the  Silver  King;  or 
there  would  be  crackle  of  more  than  champagne 
corks.  Men  would  duck  for  hiding.  A  body 
would  be  dragged  out,  sand  spread  on  the  floor,  and 
the  games  went  on  morning,  noon  and  night.  The 
Missions  are  crumbling  ruins.  So  is  the  Silver  King. 
Frontiersmen  will  tell  you  regretfully  of  the  good 


218  SAN  ANTONIO 

old  days  forever  gone,  when  the  night  passed  but 
dully  if  the  cowboys  did  not  shoot  up  all  the  saloons 
and  "  hurdle  "  the  gaming  tables. 

Yesterday,  it  was  cowboy  and  mines  in  San  An- 
tonio. To-day,  it  is  polo  and  tourist ;  and  the  transi- 
tion is  a  natural  growth.  One  would  hate  to  think 
of  the  risks  of  the  Long  Trail,  for  miners  from  Old 
Mexico  to  Fort  Leavenworth,  for  cowboys  from 
Fort  Worth  to  Wyoming  and  St.  Louis,  and  not  see 
the  risks  rewarded  in  fortunes  to  these  trail  makers. 
The  cowboy  and  miner  of  the  olden  days  —  the 
cowboy  and  miner  who  survived,  that  is  —  are  the 
capitalists  taking  their  pleasure  in  San  Antonio  to- 
day. It  was  natural  that  the  cow  pony  bred  to  keep- 
ing its  feet  in  mid-air,  or  on  earth,  should  develop 
into  the  finest  type  of  polo  pony  ever  known.  For 
years,  the  polo  clubs  of  the  North,  Lenox,  Long 
Island,  Milbrook,  have  made  a  regular  business  of 
scouring  Texas  for  polo  ponies.  Horses  giving 
promise  of  good  points  would  be  picked  up  at  $80, 
$100,  $150.  They  would  then  be  rounded  on  a 
ranch  and  trained.  San  Antonio  is  situated  almost 
700  feet  up  on  a  high,  clear  plateau  rimmed  by  blue 
ridges  in  the  distance.  Recently,  a  polo  ground  of 
3,200  acres  has  been  laid  out;  and  the  polo  clubs 
of  the  North  are  to  be  invited  to  San  Antonio  for 
the  winter  fiestas.  As  Fort  Sam  Houston  boasts 
one  of  the  best  polo  clubs  of  the  South,  competition 
is  likely  to  attract  the  sportsmen  from  far  and 
near. 


SAN  ANTONIO  219 

You  know  how  it  is  in  all  these  new  Western  cities. 
They  are  feverish  with  a  mania  of  progress.  They 
have  grown  so  fast  they  cannot  keep  track  of  their 
own  hobble-de-hoy,  sprawling  limbs.  They  are 
drunk  with  prosperity.  In  real  estate  alone,  for- 
tunes have  come,  as  it  were,  overnight.  All  this 
San  Antonio  has  not  escaped.  They  will  tell  you 
with  pardonable  pride  how  this  little  cow  town, 
where  land  wasn't  worth  two  cents  an  acre  out- 
side the  Mission  walls,  has  jumped  to  be  a  metropoli- 
tan city  of  over  100,000;  how  it  is  the  center  of  the 
great  truck  and  irrigation  farm  district.  Fort  Sam 
Houston  always  has  700  or  800  soldiers  in  garrison, 
and  sometimes  has  as  many  as  4,000;  and  when  army 
maneuvers  take  place,  there  is  an  immense  reserva- 
tion outside  the  city  where  as  many  as  20,000  men 
can  practice  mimic  war.  The  day  of  two  cents  or 
even  $20  an  acre  land  round  San  Antonio  is  forever 
past.  Land  under  the  ditch  is  too  valuable  for  the 
rating  of  twenty  acres  to  one  steer. 

All  this  and  more  you  will  see  of  modern  San 
Antonio;  but  still  if  at  sundown  you  set  out  on  a 
vagrant  and  solitary  tour  of  the  old  Missions,  I 
think  you  will  feel  as  I  felt  that  it  was  the  dauntless 
spirit  of  the  old  regime  that  fired  the  blood  of  the 
moderns  for  the  new  day  that  is  dawning.  I  don't 
know  why  it  is,  but  anything  in  life  that  is  worth  hav- 
ing seems  to  demand  service  and  sacrifice  and,  oftener 
than  not,  the  martyrdom  of  heroic  and  terrible  de- 
feat. Then,  when  you  think  that  the  flag  of  the 
cause  is  trampled  in  a  mire  of  bloodshed,  phoenix- 


220  SAN  ANTONIO 

like  the  cause  rises  on  eagles'  wings  to  new  height, 
new  daring,  new  victory.  It  was  so  in  Texas. 

When  you  visit  the  Missions  of  San  Antonio,  go 
alone;  or  go  with  a  kindred  spirit.  Don't  talk! 
Let  the  mysticism  and  wonder  of  it  sink  in  your  soul ! 
Soak  yourself  in  the  traditions  of  the  Past.  Let  the 
dead  hand  of  the  Past  reach  out  and  touch  you. 
You  will  live  over  again  the  heroism  of  the  Alamo, 
the  heroism  that  preceded  the  Alamo  —  that  of  the 
Franciscans  who  tramped  300  leagues  across  the  des- 
ert of  Old  Mexico  to  establish  these  Missions;  the 
heroism  that  preceded  the  Franciscans  —  that  of  La 
Salle  traveling  thrice  300  leagues  to  establish  the 
cross  on  the  Gulf  of  Mexico,  and  perishing  by  as- 
sassin's hand  as  he  turned  on  the  backward  march. 
You  will  see  the  iron  cross  to  his  memory  at  Levaca. 
It  was  because  La  Salle,  the  Frenchman,  found  his 
way  to  the  Gulf,  that  Spain  stirred  up  the  viceroys 
of  New  Mexico  to  send  sword  and  cross  over  the 
desert  to  establish  forts  in  the  country  of  the  Tejas 
(Texans). 

Do  you  realize  what  that  means?  When  I  cross 
the  arid  hills  of  the  Rio  Grande,  I  travel  in  a  car 
cooled  by  electric  fans,  with  two  or  three  iced  drinks 
between  meals.  These  men  marched  —  most  of 
them  on  foot,  the  cowled  priests  in  sandals,  the 
knights  in  armor  plate  from  head  to  heel  —  over 
cactus  sands.  Do  you  wonder  that  they  died  on  the 
way?  Do  you  wonder  that  the  marchers  coming 
into  the  well-watered  plains  of  the  San  Antonio  with 
festooned  live  oaks  overhanging  the  green  waters, 


SAN  ANTONIO  221 

paused  here  and  built  ^their  string  of  Missions  of 
which  the  chief  was  the  one  now  known  as  "  The 
Alamo" — the  Mission  of  the  cottonwood  trees? 

Six  different  flags  have  flown  over  the  land  of 
the  Tejas:  the  French,  the  Spanish,  the  Mexican, 
the  Republic  of  Texas,  the  Confederate,  the  Union. 
In  such  a  struggle  for  ascendancy,  needless  to  tell, 
much  blood  was  shed  righteously  and  unrighteously; 
but  of  the  battle  fought  at  the  Alamo,  no  justifica- 
tion need  be  given.  It  is  part  of  American  history, 
but  it  is  the  kind  of  history  that  in  other  nations 
goes  to  make  battle  hymns.  Details  are  in  every 
school  book.  Santa  Ana,  the  newly  risen  Mexican 
dictator,  had  ordered  the  30,000  Americans  who 
lived  in  Texas,  to  disarm.  Sam  Houston,  Crockett, 
Bowie,  Travis,  had  sprung  to  arms  with  a  call  that 
rings  down  to  history  yet: 

"  Fellow  citizens  and  compatriots,"  wrote  Travis 
from  the  doomed  Alamo  Mission,  to  Houston  and 
the  other  leaders  outside,  "  I  am  besieged  by  a  thou- 
sand or  more  Mexicans  under  Santa  Ana.  I  have 
sustained  a  continued  bombardment  for  twenty-four 
hours  and  have  not  lost  a  man.  .  .  .  The  garrison 
is  to  be  put  to  the  sword  if  the  place  is  taken.  I 
have  answered  the  summons  with  a  cannon  shot  and 
our  flag  still  waves  proudly  from  the  walls.  I  shall 
never  surrender,  nor  retreat.  I  call  on  you  in  the 
name  of  liberty,  and  of  everything  dear  to  the  Ameri- 
can character,  to  come  to  our  aid  with  all  despatch. 
The  enemy  is  receiving  reinforcements  daily,  and 


SAN  ANTONIO 

will  no  doubt  increase  to  3,000  or  4,000  in  four  or 
five  days.  Though  this  call  may  be  neglected,  I  am 
determined  to  sustain  myself  as  long  as  possible  and 
die  like  a  soldier  who  forgets  not  what  is  due  to  his 
own  honor  and  that  of  his  country  —  Victory  or 
Death  1 

W.  Barrett  Travis 

Lieut-Col.  Commanding." 

In  the  fort  with  Travis  were  180  men  under  Bowie 
and  Crockett.  The  siege  began  on  Feb.  23,  1836, 
and  ended  on  March  6th.  Besides  the  frontiersmen 
in  the  fort  were  two  women,  two  children  and 
two  slaves.  The  Mission  was  arranged  in  a  great 
quadrangle  fifty- four  by  154  yards  with  acequias  or 
irrigation  ditches  both  to  front  and  rear.  The  gar- 
rison had  succeeded  in  getting  inside  the  walls  about 
thirty  bushels  of  corn  and  eighty  beef  cattle ;  so  there 
was  no  danger  of  famine.  The  big  courtyard  was 
in  the  rear.  The  convent  projected  out  in  front  of 
the  courtyard.  To  the  left  angle  of  the  convent  was 
the  chapel  or  Mission  of  the  Alamo.  Santa  Ana 
had  come  across  the  desert  with  5,000  men.  To  the 
demand  for  surrender,  Travis  answered  with  a  can- 
non shot.  The  Mexican  leader  then  hung  the  re'd 
flag  above  his  camp  and  ordered  the  band  to  play 
"  no  quarter."  For  eight  days,  shells  came  hurtling 
inside  the  walls  incessantly,  dawn  to  dark,  dark  to 
dawn.  Just  at  sunset  on  March  3rd,  there  was  a 
bell.  Travis  collected  his  men  and  gave  them  their 
choice  of  surrendering  and  being  shot,  or  cutting 


SAN  ANTONIO  223 

their  way  out  through  the  besieging  line.  The  be- 
siegers at  this  time  consisted  of  2,500  infantrymen 
bunched  close  to  the  walls  of  the  Alamo  —  too  close 
to  be  shot  from  above,  and  2,500  cavalry  and  in- 
fantry back  on  the  Plaza  and  encircling  the  Mission 
to  cut  off  all  avenue  of  escape. 

Travis  drew  a  line  on  the  ground  with  his  sword. 

"  Every  man  who  will  die  with  me,  come  across 
that  line!  Who  will  be  first?  March  I" 

Every  man  leaped  over  the  line  but  Bowie,  who 
was  ill  on  a  cot  bed. 

"  Boys,  move  my  cot  over  the  line,"  he  said. 

At  four  o'clock  next  morning,  the  siege  was  re- 
sumed. The  bugle  blew  a  single  blast.  With  picks, 
crowbars  and  ladders,  the  Mexicans  closed  in.  The 
besieged  waited  breathlessly.  The  Mexicans  placed 
the  ladders  and  began  scaling.  The  sharpshooters 
inside  the  walls  waited  till  the  heads  appeared  above 
the  walls  —  then  fired.  As  the  top  man  fell  back, 
the  one  beneath  on  the  ladder  stepped  in  the  dead 
man's  place.  Then  the  Americans  clubbed  their 
guns  and  fought  hand  to  hand.  By  that,  the  Mexi- 
cans knew  that  ammunition  was  exhausted  and  the 
defenders  few.  The  walls  were  scaled  and  battered 
down  first  in  a  far  corner  of  the  convent  yard.  Be- 
hind the  chapel  door,  piles  of  sand  had  been  stacked. 
From  the  yard,  the  Texans  were  driven  to  the  con- 
vent, from  the  convent  to  the  chapel.  Travis  fell 
shot  at  the  breach  in  the  yard  wall.  Bowie  was 
bayoneted  on  the  cot  where  he  lay.  Crockett  was 
clubbed  to  death  just  outside  the  chapel  door  to  the 


224  SAN  ANTONIO 

left.  By  nine  o'clock,  no  answering  shot  came  from 
the  Alamo.  The  doors  were  rammed  and  rushed. 
Not  a  Texan  survived.  Two  women,  two  children 
and  a  couple  of  slaves  were  pulled  out  of  hiding 
from  chancel  and  stalls.  These  were  sent  across  to 
the  main  camp.  The  bodies  of  the  182  heroes  were 
piled  in  a  pyramid  with  fagots;  and  fired.  So 
ended  the  Battle  of  the  Alamo,  one  of  the  most 
terrible  defeats  and  heroic  defenses  in  American  his- 
tory. It  is  unnecessary  to  relate  that  Sam  Houston 
exacted  from  the  Mexicans  on  the  battlefield  of  San 
Jacinto  a  terrible  punishment  for  this  defeat.  Cap- 
tured and  killed,  his  toll  of  defeated  Mexicans  down 
at  Houston  came  to  almost  1,700. 

Such  is  the  story  of  one  of  San  Antonio's  Mis- 
sions. One  other  has  a  tale  equally  tragic;  but  all 
but  two  are  falling  to  utter  ruin.  I  don't  know 
whether  it  would  be  greater  desecration  to  lay  hand 
on  them  and  save  them,  or  let  them  fall  to  dust.  It 
was  nightfall  when  I  went  to  the  three  on  the  out- 
skirts of  the  city.  Two  have  little  left  but  the  walls 
and  the  towers.  A  third  is  still  used  as  place  of 
worship  by  a  little  settlement  of  Mexicans.  The 
slant  light  of  sunset  came  through  the  darkened, 
vacant  windows,  the  tiers  of  weathered  stalls,  the 
empty,  twin-towered  belfries.  You  could  see  where 
the  well  stood,  the  bake  house,  the  school.  Shrub- 
bery planted  by  the  monks  has  grown  wild  in  the 
courtyards;  but  you  can  still  call  up  the  picture  of 
the  cowled  priests  chanting  prayers.  The  Missions 


SAN  ANTONIO  225 

are  ruins;  but  the  hope  that  animated  them,  the  fire, 
the  heroism,  the  dauntless  faith,  still  burn  in  Texas 
blood  as  the  sunset  flame  shines  through  the  dis- 
mantled windows. 


CHAPTER  XIV 

CASA   GRANDE  AND  THE  GILA 

IF  someone  should  tell  you  of  a  second  Grand 
Canon  gashed  through  wine-colored  rocks  in  the 
purple  light  peculiar  to  the  uplands  of  very 
high  mountains  —  a  second  Grand  Canon,  where 
lived  a  race  of  little  men  not  three  feet  tall,  where 
wild  turkeys  were  domesticated  as  household  birds 
and  every  man's  door  was  in  the  roof  and  his  door- 
step a  ladder  that  he  carried  up  after  him  —  you 
would  think  it  pure  imagination,  wouldn't  you? 
The  Lilliputians  away  out  in  "  Gulliver's  Travels," 
or  something  like  that?  And  if  your  narrator  went 
on  about  magicians  who  danced  with  live  rattlesnakes 
hanging  from  their  teeth  and  belted  about  their 
waists,  and  played  with  live  fire  without  being 
burned,  and  walked  up  the  faces  of  precipices  as  a 
fly  walks  up  a  wall  —  you  would  think  him  rehears- 
ing some  Robinson  Crusoe  tale  about  two  genera- 
tions too  late  to  be  believed. 

Yet  there  is  a  second  Grand  Canon  not  a  stone's 
throw  from  everyday  tourist  travel,  wilder  in  game 
life  and  rock  formation  if  not  so  large,  with  prehis- 
toric caves  on  its  precipice  walls  where  sleeps  a  race 
of  little  mummied  men  behind  doors  and  windows 
barely  large  enough  to  admit  a  half-grown  white 

226 


CASA  GRANDE  AND  THE  GILA    227 

child.  Who  were  they?  No  one  knows.  When 
did  they  live?  So  long  ago  that  they  were  cave 
men,  stone  age  men;  so  long  ago  that  neither  his- 
tory nor  tradition  has  the  faintest  echo  of  their 
existence.  Where  did  they  live?  No,  it  was  not 
Europe,  Asia,  Africa  or  Australia.  If  it  were,  we 
would  know  about  them.  As  it  happens,  this  second 
Grand  Canon  is  only  in  plain,  nearby,  home-staying 
America ;  so  when  boys  of  the  Forest  Service  pulled 
Little  Zeke  out  of  his  gypsum  and  pumice  stone  dust 
and  measured  him  up  and  found  him  only  twenty- 
three  inches  long,  though  the  hair  sticking  to  the 
skull  was  gray  and  the  teeth  were  those  of  an  adult 
—  as  it  happened  in  only  matter-of-fact,  common- 
place America,  poor  Little  Zeke  couldn't  get  shelter. 
They  trounced  his  little  dry  bones  round  Silver  City, 
New  Mexico,  for  a  few  months.  Then  they  boxed 
him  up  and  shipped  him  away  to  be  stored  out  of 
sight  in  the  cellars  of  the  Smithsonian,  at  Washing- 
ton. As  Zeke  has  been  asleep  since  the  Ice  Age, 
or  about  ten  to  eight  thousand  years  B.  C.,  it  doesn't 
make  very  much  difference  to  him;  but  one  wonders 
what  in  the  world  New  Mexico  was  doing  allowing 
one  of  the  most  wonderful  specimens  of  a  prehistoric 
dwarf  race  ever  found  to  be  shipped  out  of  the 
country. 

It  was  in  the  Gila  Canon  that  the  Forestry  Serv- 
ice boys  found  him.  By  some  chance,  they  at  once 
dubbed  the  little  mummy  "  Zeke."  The  Gila  is  a 
typical  box-canon,  walled  as  a  tunnel,  colored  in 
fire  tints  like  the  Grand  Canon,  literally  terraced 


228     CASA  GRANDE  AND  THE  GILA 

and  honeycombed  with  the  cave  dwellings  of  a  pre- 
historic race.  It  lies  some  fifty  miles  as  the  crow 
flies  from  Silver  City;  but  the  way  the  crow  flies  and 
the  way  man  travels  are  an  altogether  different  story 
in  the  wild  lands  of  the  Gila  Mountains.  You'll 
have  to  make  the  most  of  the  way  on  horseback  with 
tents  for  hotels,  or  better  still  the  stars  for  a  roof. 
Besides,  what  does  it  matter  when  or  how  the  little 
scrub  of  a  twenty-three-inch  man  lived  anyway? 
We  moderns  of  evolutionary  smattering  have  our 
own  ideas  of  how  cave  men  dwelt;  and  we  don't 
want  those  ideas  disturbed.  The  cave  men  —  ask 
Jack  London  if  you  don't  believe  it  —  were  hairy 
monsters,  not  quite  tailless,  just  cotton-tail-rabbity  in 
their  caudal  appendage  —  hairy  monsters,  who 
munched  raw  beef  and  dragged  women  by  the  hair 
of  the  head  to  pitch-black,  dark  as  night,  smoke-be- 
grimed caves.  That  is  the  way  they  got  their 
wives.  (Perhaps,  if  Little  Zeke  could  speak,  he 
would  think  he  ought  to  sue  moderns  for  libel.  He 
might  think  that  our  "  blond-beast "  theories  are  a 
reflex  of  our  own  civilization.  He  might  smile 
through  his  grinning  jaws.) 

Anyway,  there  lies  Little  Zeke,  a  long  time  asleep, 
wrapped  in  cerements  of  fine  woven  cloth  with 
fluffy-ruffles  and  fol-de-rols  of  woven  blue  jay  and 
bluebird  and  hummingbird  feathers  round  his  neck. 
Zeke's  people  understood  weaving.  Also  Zeke 
wears  on  his  feet  sandals  of  yucca  fiber  and  matting. 
I  don't  know  what  our  ancestors  wore  —  according 
to  evolutionists,  it  may  have  been  hair  and  monkey 


CASA  GRANDE  AND  THE  GILA     229 

pads.  So  if  you  understood  as  much  about  Zeke's 
history  as  you  do  about  the  Pyramids,  you'd  settle 
some  of  the  biggest  disputes  in  theology  and  ethnol- 
ogy and  anthropology  and  a  lot  of  other  "  ologies," 
which  have  something  more  or  less  to  do  with  the 
salvation  and  damnation  of  the  soul. 

How  is  it  known  that  Zeke  is  a  type  of  a  race, 
and  not  a  freak  specimen  of  a  dwarf?  Because 
other  like  specimens  have  been  found  in  the  same 
area  in  the  last  ten  years;  and  because  the  windows 
and  the  doors  of  the  cave  dwellings  of  the  Gila 
would  not  admit  anything  but  a*  dwarf  race.  They 
may  not  all  have  been  twenty-four  and  thirty-six  and 
forty  inches;  but  no  specimens  the  size  of  the  mum- 
mies in  other  prehistoric  dwellings  have  been  found 
in  the  Gila.  For  instance,  down  at  Casa  Grande, 
they  found  skeletons  buried  in  the  gypsum  dust  of 
back  chambers;  but  these  skeletons  were  six-footers, 
and  the  roofs  of  the  Casa  Grande  chambers  were 
for  tall  men.  Up  in  the  Frijoles  cave  dwellings, 
they  have  dug  out  of  the  tufa  dust  of  ten  centuries 
bodies  swathed  in  woven  cloth;  but  these  bodies  are 
of  a  modern  race  five  or  six  feet  tall.  You  have 
only  to  look  at  Zeke  to  know  that  he  is  not,  as  we 
understand  the  word,  an  Indian.  Was  he  an  an- 
cestor of  the  Aztecs  or  the  Toltecs? 

Though  you  cannot  go  out  to  the  Gila  by  motor 
to  a  luxurious  hotel,  there  are  compensations.  You 
will  see  a  type  of  life  unique  and  picturesque  as  in 
the  Old  World  —  countless  flocks  of  sheep  herded 
by  soft-voiced  peons.  It  is  the  only  section  yet  left 


230     CASA  GRANDE  AND  THE  GILA 

in  the  West  where  freighters  with  double  teams  and 
riders  with  bull  whips  wind  in  and  out  of  the  narrow 
canons  with  their  long  lines  of  tented  wagons.  It 
is  still  a  land  where  game  is  plentiful  as  in  the  old 
days,  trout  and  turkey  and  grouse  and  deer  and 
bear  and  mountain  lion,  and  even  bighorn,  though 
the  last  named  are  under  protection  of  closed  sea- 
son just  now.  I'm  always  afraid  to  tell  an  Easterner 
or  town  dweller  of  the  hunt  of  these  old  trappers 
of  the  box  canons;  but  as  many  as  thirteen  bear 
have  been  killed  on  the  Gila  in  three  weeks.  The 
altitude  of  the  trail  from  Silver  City  to  the  Gila 
runs  from  6,000  to  9,150  feet.  When  you  have 
told  that  to  a  Westerner,  you  don't  need  to  tell  any- 
thing else.  It  means  burros  for  pack  animals.  In 
the  Southwest  it  means  forests  of  huge  yellow  pines, 
open  upland  like  a  park,  warm,  clear  days,  cool 
nights,  and  though  in  the  desert,  none  of  the  heat 
nor  the  dust  of  the  desert. 

It  is  the  ideal  land  for  tuberculosis,  though  all 
invalids  should  be  examined  as  to  heart  action  before 
attempting  any  altitude  over  4,000  feet.  And  the 
Southwest  has  worked  out  an  ideal  system  of  treat- 
ment for  tuberculosis  patients.  They  are  no  longer 
housed  in  stuffy  hotels  and  air  tight,  super-heated 
sanitariums.  Each  sanitarium  is  now  a  tent  city  — 
portable  houses  or  tents  floored  and  boarded  half- 
way up,  with  the  upper  half  of  the  wall  a  curtain 
window,  and  a  little  stove  in  each  tent.  Each  pa- 
tient has,  if  he  wants  it,  a  little  hospital  all  to  him- 
self. There  is  a  central  dining-room.  There  is 


^^^^"••••^^••"•^^••^^••••iM^^^MMI^^MMBBi^B^^B 

The  Enchanted  Mesa  of  Acoma,  as  high  as  three  Niagaras, 
and   its   top   as   flat   as   a   billiard   table 


CASA  GRANDE  AND  THE  GILA     231 

also  a  dispensary.  In  some  cases,  there  are  church 
and  amusement  hall.  Where  means  permit  it,  a 
family  may  have  a  little  tent  city  all  to  itself;  and 
they  don't  call  the  tent  city  a  sanitarium.  They 
call  it  "  Sun  Mount/'  or  "  Happy  Canon,"  or  some 
other  such  name.  The  percentage  of  recoveries  is 
wonderful;  but  the  point  is,  the  invalids  must  come 
in  time.  Wherever  you  go  along  the  borders  of 
Old  and  New  Mexico  searching  for  prehistoric 
ruins,  you  come  on  these  tent  cities. 

Where  can  one  see  these  cliff  and  cave  dwellings 
of  a  prehistoric  dwarf?  Please  note  the  points. 
Cliff  and  cave  dwellings  are  not  the  same.  Cliff 
dwellings  are  houses  made  by  building  up  the  front 
of  a  natural  arch.  This  front  wall  was  either  in 
stone  or  sun-baked  adobe.  Cave  dwellings  are 
houses  hollowed  out  of  the  solid  rock,  a  feat  not  so 
difficult  as  it  sounds  when  you  consider  the  rock  is 
only  soft  pumice  or  tufa,  that  yields  to  scraping  more 
readily  than  bath  brick  or  soft  lime.  The  cliff 
dwellings  are  usually  only  one  story.  The  cave 
dwellings  may  run  five  stories  up  inside  the  rock, 
natural  stone  steps  leading  from  tier  to  tier  of  the 
rooms,  and  tiny  porthole  windows  looking  down 
precipices  500  to  1,000  feet.  The  cliff  dwellings 
are  mostly  entered  by  narrow  trails  leading  along 
the  ledge  of  a  precipice  sheer  as  a  wall.  The  first 
story  of  the  cave  dwellings  was  entered  by  a  light 
ladder,  which  the  owner  could  draw  up  after  him. 
Remember  it  was  the  Stone  Age:  no  metals,  no  fire- 
arms, no  battering  rams,  nor  devices  for  throwing 


23  2     CAS  A  GRANDE  AND  THE  GILA 

projectiles.  A  man  with  a  rock  in  his  hand  in  the 
doorway  of  either  type  of  dwelling  could  swiftly 
and  deftly  and  politely  speed  the  parting  guest  with 
a  brickbat  on  his  head.  Similar  types  of  pottery 
and  shell  ornament  are  found  in  both  sorts  of  dwell- 
ings; but  I  have  never  seen  any  cliff  dwellings  with 
evidences  of  such  religious  ceremony  as  in  the  cave 
houses.  Perhaps  the  difference  between  cliff  folk 
and  cave  folk  would  be  best  expressed  by  saying  that 
the  cliff  people  were  to  ancient  life  what  the  East 
Side  is  to  us:  the  cave  people  what  upper  Fifth 
Avenue  represents.  One  the  riff-raff,  the  weak,  the 
poor,  driven  to  the  wall;  the  other,  the  strong,  the 
secure  and  defended. 

You  go  to  one  section  of  ruins,  and  you  come  to 
certain  definite  conclusions.  Then  you  go  on  to  an- 
other group  of  ruins;  and  every  one  of  your  con- 
clusions is  reversed.  For  instance,  what  drove  these 
races  out?  What  utterly  extinguished  their  civili- 
zation so  that  not  a  vestige,  not  an  echo  of  a  tra- 
dition exists  of  their  history?  Scientists  go  up  to 
the  Rio  Grande  in  New  Mexico,  see  evidence  of 
ancient  irrigation  ditches,  of  receding  springs  an'd 
decreasing  waters;  and  they  at  once  pronounce  — 
desiccation.  The  earth  is  burning  up  at  the  rate  of 
an  inch  or  two  of  water  in  a  century;  moisture  is 
receding  toward  the  Poles  as  it  has  in  Mars,  till 
Mars  is  mostly  arid,  sun-parched  desert  round  its 
middle  and  ice  round  the  Poles.  Good!  When 
you  look  down  from  the  cliff  dwellings  of  Walnut 
Canon,  near  Flagstaff,  that  explanation  seems  to 


CASA  GRANDE  AND  THE  GILA     233 

hold  good.  There  certainly  must  have  been  water 
once  at  the  bottom  of  this  rocky  box-canon.  When 
the  water  sank  below  the  level  of  the  springs,  the 
people  had  to  move  out.  Very  well !  You  come  on 
down  to  the  cave  dwellings  of  the  Gila.  The  bot- 
tom falls  out  of  your  explanation,  for  there  is  a 
perpetual  gush  of  water  down  these  rock  walls  from 
unfailing  mountain  springs.  Why,  then,  did  the 
race  of  little  people  move  out?  What  wiped  them 
out?  Why  they  moved  in  one  can  easily  under- 
stand. The  box  canons  are  so  narrow  that  half  a 
dozen  pigmy  boys  deft  with  a  sling  and  stones  could 
keep  out  an  army  of  enemies.  The  houses  were  so 
built  that  a  child  could  defend  the  doorway  with  a 
club;  and  where  the  houses  have  long  hallways  and 
stairs  as  in  Casa  Grande,  the  passages  are  so  narrow 
as  to  compel  an  enemy  to  wiggle  sideways;  and  one 
can  guess  the  inmates  would  not  be  idle  while  the 
venturesome  intruder  was  wedging  himself  along. 
Also,  the  bottoms  of  these  box-canons  afforded  ideal 
corn  fields.  The  central  stream  permitted  easy  irri- 
gation on  each  side  by  tapping  the  waterfall  higher 
up;  and  the  wash  of  the  silt  of  centuries  ensured 
fertility  to  men,  whose  plowing  must  have  been  ac- 
complished by  the  shoulder  blade  of  a  deer  used  as 
a  hoe. 

Modern  pueblo  Indians  claim  to  be  descendants  of 
these  prehistoric  dwarf  races.  So  are  we  descend- 
ants of  Adam;  but  we  don't  call  him  our  uncle;  and 
if  he  had  a  say,  he  might  disown  us.  Anyway,  how 
have  modern  descendants  of  the  dwarf  types  devel- 


234     CASA  GRANDE  AND  THE  GILA 

oped  into  six-foot  modern  Pimas  and  Papagoes?  It 
is  said  the  Navajo  and  Apache  came  originally  from 
Athabasca  stock.  Maybe;  but  the  Pimas  and 
Papagoes  claim  their  Garden  of  Eden  right  in  the 
Southwest.  They  call  their  Garden  of  Eden  by  the 
picturesque  name  of  "  Morning  Glow." 

How  reach  the  caves  of  the  dwarf  race? 

To  the  Gila  group,  you  must  go  by  way  of  Silver 
City;  and  better  go  in  with  Forest  Service  men,  for 
this  is  the  Gila  National  Forest  and  the  men  know 
the  trails.  You  will  find  ranch  houses  near,  where 
you  can  secure  board  and  room  for  from  $1.50  to 
$2  a  day.  The  "  room  "  may  be  a  boarded  up  tent; 
but  that  is  all  the  better.  Or  you  may  take  your 
own  blanket  and  sleep  in  the  caves.  Perfectly  safe 

—  believe  me,  I  have  fared  all  these  ways  —  when 
you  have  nearly  broken  your  neck  climbing  up  a 
precipice  to  a  sheltered  cave  room,  you  need  not 
fear  being   followed.     The   caves   are   clean   as   if 
kalsomined   from   centuries  and   centuries   of  wash 
and  wind.     You  may  hear  the  wolves  bark  —  bark 

—  bark  under  your  pillowed  doorway  all  night;  but 
wolves  don't  climb  up  6oofoot  precipice  walls.     Also 
if  it  is  cold  in  the  caves,  you  will  find  in  the  corner 
of  nearly  all,  a  small,  high  fireplace,  where  the  glow 
of  a  few  burning  juniper  sticks  will  drive  out  the 
chill. 

What  did  they  eat  and  how  did  they  live,  these 
ancient  people,  who  wore  fine  woven  cloth  at  an  era 
when  Aryan  races  wore  skins?  Like  all  desert 
races,  they  were  not  great  meat  eaters;  and  the 


CASA  GRANDE  AND  THE  GILA     235 

probabilities  are  that  fish  were  tabooed.  You  find 
remains  of  game  in  the  caves,  but  these  are  chiefly 
feather  decorations,  prayer  plumes  to  waft  petitions 
to  the  gods,  or  bones  used  as  tools.  On  the  other 
hand,  there  is  abundance  of  dried  corn  in  the  caves, 
of  gourds  and  squash  seeds;  and  every  cave  has  a 
metate,  or  grinding  stone.  In  many  of  the  caves, 
there  are  alcoves  in  the  solid  wall,  where  meal  was 
stored;  and  of  water  jars,  urns,  ollas,  there  are  rem- 
nants and  whole  pieces  galore.  It  is  thought  these 
people  used  not  only  yucca  fiber  for  weaving,  but 
some  species  of  hemp  and  cotton;  for  there  are 
tatters  and  strips  of  what  might  have  been  cotton  or 
linen.  You  see  it  wrapped  round  the  bodies  of  the 
mummies  and  come  on  it  in  the  accumulation  of  vol- 
canic ash. 

Near  many  of  the  ruins  is  a  huge  empty  basin  or 
pit,  which  must  have  been  used  as  a  reservoir  in 
which  waters  were  impounded  during  siege  of  war. 
Like  conies  of  the  rocks,  or  beehives  of  modern  sky- 
scrapers, these  denizens  lived.  The  most  of  the 
mummies  have  been  found  in  sealed  up  chambers  at 
the  backs  of  the  main  houses;  but  these  could  hardly 
have  been  general  burying  places,  for  comparatively 
few  mummies  have  yet  been  found.  Who,  then, 
were  these  dwarf  mummies,  placed  in  sealed  vaults 
to  the  rear  of  the  Gila  caves?  Perhaps  a  favorite 
father,  brother,  or  sister;  perhaps  a  governor  of  the 
tribe,  who  perished  during  siege  and  could  not  be 
taken  out  to  the  common  burial  ground. 

Picture  to  yourself  a  precipice  face  from  300  to 


236     CASA  GRANDE  AND  THE  GILA 

700  feet  high,  literally  punctured  with  tiny  porthole 
windows  and  doll  house  open  cave  doors.  It  is  sun- 
set. The  rocks  of  these  box-canons  in  the  South- 
west are  of  a  peculiar  wine-colored  red  and  golden 
ocher,  or  else  dead  gray  and  gypsum  white.  Owing 
to  the  great  altitude  —  some  of  the  ruins  are  9,000 
feet  above  sea  level,  1,000  above  valley  bottom  — 
the  atmosphere  has  that  curious  quality  of  splitting 
white  light  into  its  seven  prismatic  hues.  Artists  of 
the  Southwestern  School  account  for  this  by  the  fact 
of  desert  dust  being  a  silt  fine  as  flour,  which  acts 
like  crystal  or  glass  in  splitting  the  rays  of  white 
light  into  its  prismatic  colors;  but  this  hardly  ex- 
plains these  high  box-canons,  for  there  is  no  dust 
here.  My  own  theory  (please  note,  it  is  only  a 
theory  and  may  be  quite  wrong)  is  that  the  air  is  so 
rare  at  altitudes  above  6,000  feet,  so  rare  and  pure 
that  it  splits  light  up,  if  not  in  seven  prismatic  col- 
ors, then  in  elementary  colors  that  give  the  reds  and 
purples  and  fire  tints  predominance.  Anyway,  at 
sunset  and  sunrise,  these  box-canons  literally  swim 
in  a  glory  of  lavender  and  purple  and  fiery  reds. 
You  almost  fancy  it  is  a  fire  where  you  can  dip  your 
hand  and  not  be  burned;  a  sea  in  which  spirits,  not 
bodies,  swim  and  move  and  have  their  being;  a  sea 
of  fiery  rainbow  colors. 

The  sunset  fades.  The  shadows  come  down  like 
invisible  wings.  The  twilight  deepens.  The  stars 
prick  through  the  indigo  blue  of  a  desert  sky  like 
lighted  candles;  and  there  flames  up  in  the  doorway 
of  cavern  window  and  door  the  deep  red  of  juniper 


CASA  GRANDE  AND  THE  GILA    237 

and  cedar  log  glow  in  the  fireplaces  at  the  corner  of 
each  room.  The  mourning  dove  utters  his  plain- 
tive wail.  You  hear  the  yap-yap  of  fox  and  coyote 
far  up  among  the  big  timbers  between  you  and  the 
snows.  Then  a  gong  rings.  (Gong?  In  a  metal- 
less  age?  Yes,  the  gong  is  a  flint  bar  struck  by  the 
priest  with  a  bone  clapper.)  The  dancers  come 
down  out  of  the  caves  to  the  dancing  floors  in  the 
middle  of  the  narrow  canon.  You  can  see  the  danc- 
ing rings  yet,  where  the  feet  of  a  thousand  years 
have  beaten  the  raw  earth  hard.  Men  only  dance. 
These  are  not  sex  dances.  They  are  dances  of 
thanks  to  the  gods  for  the  harvest  home  of  corn;  or 
for  victory.  The  gong  ceases  clapping.  The  camp- 
fires  that  scent  the  canon  with  juniper  smells,  flicker 
and  fade  and  die.  The  rhythmic  beat  of  the  feet 
that  dance  ceases  and  fades  in  the  darkness. 

That  was  ten  thousand  years  agone.  Where  are 
the  races  that  danced  to  the  beat  of  the  priest's  clap- 
per gong? 

I  wakened  one  morning  in  one  of  the  Frijoles 
caves  to  the  mournful  wail  of  the  turtle  dove;  and 
there  came  back  that  old  prophecy  —  it  used  to  give 
me  cold  shivers  down  my  spine  as  a  child  —  that 
the  habitat  of  the  races  who  fear  not  God  shall  be 
the  haunt  of  bittern  and  hoot  owl  and  bat  and 
fox. 

I  don't  know  what  reason  there  is  for  it,  neither 
do  the  Indians  of  the  Southwest  know;  but  Casa 
Grande,  the  Great  House,  or  the  Place  of  the  Morn- 


238     CASA  GRANDE  AND  THE  GILA 

ing  Glow,  is  to  them  the  Garden  of  Eden  of  their 
race  traditions;  the  scene  of  their  mythical  "  golden 
age,"  when  there  were  no  Apaches  raiding  the  crops, 
nor  white  men  stealing  land  away;  when  life  was  a 
perpetual  Happy  Hunting  Ground,  only  the  hunters 
didn't  kill,  and  all  animals  could  talk,  and  the  Desert 
was  an  antelope  plain  knee-deep  in  pasturage  and 
flowers,  and  the  springs  were  all  full  of  running 
water. 

Casa  Grande  is  undoubtedly  the  oldest  of  all  the 
prehistoric  ruins  in  the  United  States.  It  lies  some 
eighteen  to  twenty-five  miles,  according  to  the  road 
you  follow,  south  of  the  station  called  by  that  name 
on  the  Southern  Pacific  Railroad.  It  isn't  supposed 
to  rain  in  the  desert  after  the  two  summer  months, 
nor  to  blow  dust  storms  after  March;  but  it  was 
blowing  a  dust  storm  to  knock  you  off  your  feet  when 
I  reached  Casa  Grande  early  in  October;  and  a  day 
later  the  rain  was  falling  in  floods.  The  drive  can 
be  made  with  ease  in  an  afternoon;  but  better  give 
yourself  two  days,  and  stay  out  for  a  night  at  the 
tents  of  Mr.  Pinkey,  the  Government  Custodian  of 
the  ruins. 

The  ruin  itself  has  been  set  aside  as  a  perpetual 
monument.  You  drive  out  over  a  low  mesa  of  roll- 
ing mesquite  and  greasewood  and  cactus,  where  the 
giant  suaharo  stands  like  a  columned  ghost  of  cen- 
turies of  bygone  ages. 

"  How  old  are  they?  "  I  asked  my  driver,  as  we 
passed  a  huge  cactus  high  as  a  house  and  twisted  in 
contortions  as  if  in  pain.  From  tip  to  root,  the 


CASA  GRANDE  AND  THE  GILA    239 

great  trunk  was  literally  pitted  with  the  holes  pecked 
through  by  little  desert  birds  for  water. 

"  Oh,  centuries  and  centuries  old,"  he  said;  "  and 
the  queer  part  is  that  in  this  section  of  the  mesa 
water  is  sixty  feet  below  the  surface.  Their  roots 
don't  go  down  sixty  feet.  Where  do  they  get  the 
water?  I  guess  the  bark  acts  as  cement  or  rubber 
preventing  evaporation.  The  spines  keep  the  des- 
ert animals  off,  and  during  the  rainy  season  the  cac- 
tus drinks  up  all  the  water  he's  going  to  need  for 
the  year,  and  stores  it  up  in  that  big  tank  reservoir 
of  his.  But  his  time  is  up  round  these  parts;  set- 
tlers have  homesteaded  all  round  here  for  twenty- 
five  miles,  and  next  time  you  come  back  we'll  have 
orange  groves  and  pecan  orchards." 

Far  as  you  could  look  were  the  little  adobe  houses 
and  white  tents  of  the  pioneers,  stretching  barb  wire 
lines  round  i6o-acre  patches  of  mesquite  with  a  faith 
to  put  Moses  to  shame  when  he  struck  the  rock  for 
a  spring.  These  settlers  have  to  bore  down  the 
sixty  feet  to  water  level  with  very  inadequate  tools; 
and  you  see  little  burros  chasing  homemade  wind- 
lasses round  and  round,  to  pump  up  water.  It  looks 
like  "  the  faith  that  lays  it  down  and  dies."  Slow, 
hard  sledding  is  this  kind  of  farming,  but  it  is  this 
kind  of  dauntless  faith  that  made  Phoenix  and  made 
Yuma  and  made  Imperial  Valley.  Twenty  years 
ago,  you  could  squat  on  Imperial  Valley  Land.  To- 
day it  costs  $1,000  an  acre  and  yields  high  percent- 
age on  that  investment.  To-day  you  can  buy  Casa 
Grande  lands  from  $5  to  $25  an  acre.  Wait  till 


24Q     CASA  GRANDE  AND  THE  GILA 

the  water  is  turned  in  the  ditch,  and  it  will  not  seem 
such  tedious  work.  If  you  want  to  know  just  how 
hard  and  lonely  it  is,  drive  past  the  homesteads  just 
at  nightfall  as  I  did.  The  white  tent  stands  in  the 
middle  of  a  barb  wire  fence  strung  along  juniper 
poles  and  cedar  shakes;  no  house,  no  stable,  no  build- 
ings of  any  sort.  The  horses  are  staked  out.  A 
woman  is  cooking  a  meal  above  the  chip  fire.  A  lan- 
tern hangs  on  a  bush  in  front  of  the  tent  flap.  Miles 
ahead  you  see  another  lantern  gleam  and  swing,  and 
dimly  discern  the  outlines  of  another  tent  —  the 
homesteader's  nearest  neighbor.  Just  now  Casa 
Grande  town  boasts  400  people  housed  chiefly  in  one 
story  adobe  dwellings.  Come  in  five  years,  and 
Casa  Grande  will  be  boasting  her  ten  and  twenty 
thousand  people.  Like  mushrooms  overnight,  the 
little  towns  spring  up  on  irrigation  lands. 

You  catch  the  first  glimpse  of  the  ruins  about 
eighteen  miles  out  —  a  red  roof  put  on  by  the  Gov- 
ernment, then  a  huge,  square,  four  story  mass  of 
ruins  surrounded  by  broken  walls,  with  remnants  of 
big  elevated  courtyards,  and  four  or  five  other  com- 
pounds the  size  of  this  central  house,  like  the  bas- 
tions at  the  four  corners  of  a  large,  old-fashioned 
walled  fort.  The  walls  are  adobe  of  tremendous 
thickness  - —  six  feet  in  the  house  or  temple  part, 
from  one  to  three  in  the  stockade  —  a  thickness  that 
in  an  age  of  only  stone  weapons  must  have  been  im- 
penetrable. The  doors  are  so  very  low  as  to  compel 
a  person  of  ordinary  height  to  bend  almost  double  to 


CASA  GRANDE  AND  THE  GILA     241 

enter;  and  the  supposition  is  this  was  to  prevent  the 
entrance  of  an  enemy  and  give  the  doorkeeper  a 
chance  to  eject  unwelcome  visitors.  Once  inside,  the 
ceilings  are  high,  timbered  with  vigas  of  cedar 
strengthened  by  heavier  logs  that  must  have  been 
carried  in  a  horseless  age  a  hundred  miles  from  the 
mountains.  The  house  is  laid  out  on  rectangular 
lines,  and  the  halls  straight  enough  but  so  narrow 
as  to  compel  passage  sidewise.  In  every  room  is  a 
feature  that  has  puzzled  scientists  both  here  and  in 
the  cave  dwellings.  Doors  were,  of  course,  open 
squares  off  the  halls  or  other  rooms;  but  in  addition 
to  these  openings,  you  will  find  close  to  the  floor  of 
each  room,  little  round  u  cat  holes,"  one  or  two  or 
three  of  them,  big  enough  for  a  beam  but  without  a 
beam.  In  the  cave  dwellings  these  little  round  holes 
through  walls  four  or  five  feet  thick  are  frequently 
on  the  side  of  the  room  opposite  the  fireplace. 
Fewkes  and  others  think  they  may  have  been  ven- 
tilator shafts  to  keep  the  smoke  from  blowing 
back  in  the  room,  but  in  Casa  Grande  they  are  in 
rooms  where  there  is  no  fireplace.  Others  think 
they  were  whispering  tubes,  for  use  in  time  of  war 
or  religious  ceremony;  but  in  a  house  of  open  doors, 
would  it  not  have  been  as  simple  to  call  through  the 
opening?  Yet  another  explanation  is  that  they  were 
for  drainage  purpose,  the  cave  man's  first  rude  at- 
tempt at  modern  plumbing;  but  that  explanation  falls 
down,  too;  for  these  openings  don't  drain  in  any 
regular  direction.  Such  a  structure  as  Casa  Grande 


242     CASA  GRANDE  AND  THE  GILA 

must  have  housed  a  whole  tribe  in  time  of  religious 
festival  or  war;  so  you  come  back  to  the  explanation 
of  ventilator  shafts. 

The  ceilings  of  Casa  Grande  are  extraordinarily 
high;  and  bodies  found  buried  in  sealed  up  cham- 
bers behind  the  ruins  of  the  other  compounds  are 
five  or  six  feet  long,  showing  this  was  no  dwarf  race. 
The  rooms  do  not  run  off  rectangular  halls  as  our 
rooms  do.  You  tumble  down  stone  steps  through  a 
passage  so  narrow  as  to  catch  your  shoulders  into  a 
room  deep  and  narrow  as  a  grave.  Then  you  crack 
your  head  going  up  other  steps  off  this  room  to  an- 
other compartment.  Bodies  found  at  Casa  Grande 
lie  flat,  headed  to  the  east.  Bodies  found  in  the 
caves  are  trussed  up  knees  to  chin,  but  as  usual  the 
bodies  found  at  Casa  Grande  have  been  shipped 
away  East  to  be  stored  in  cellars  instead  of  being 
left  carefully  glassed  over,  where  they  were  found. 

Lower  altitude,  or  the  great  age,  or  the  quality 
of  the  clays,  may  account  for  the  peculiarly  rich 
shades  of  the  pottery  found  at  Casa  Grande.  The 
purples  and  reds  and  browns  are  tinged  an  almost 
iridescent  green.  Running  back  from  the  Great 
House  is  a  heavy  wall  as  of  a  former  courtyard. 
Backing  and  flanking  the  walls  appear  to  have 
been  other  houses,  smaller  but  built  in  the  same 
fashion  as  Casa  Grande.  Stand  on  these  ruined 
walls,  or  in  the  doorway  of  the  Great  House,  and 
you  can  see  that  five  such  big  houses  have  once 
existed  in  this  compound.  Two  or  three  curious 
features  mark  Casa  Grande.  Inside  what  must  have 


CASA  GRANDE  AND  THE  GILA     243 

been  the  main  court  of  the  compound  are  elevated 
earthen  stages  or  platforms  three  to  six  feet  high, 
solid  mounds.  Were  these  the  foundations  of  other 
Great  Houses,  or  platforms  for  the  religious  theat- 
ricals and  ceremonials  which  enter  so  largely  into 
the  lives  of  Southwestern  Indians?  At  one  place  is 
the  dry  bed  of  a  very  ancient  reservoir;  but  how  was 
water  conveyed  to  this  big  community  well?  The 
river  is  two  miles  away,  and  no  spring  is  visible  here. 
Though  you  can  see  the  footpath  of  sandaled  feet 
worn  in  the  very  rocks  of  eternity,  an  irrigation 
ditch  has  not  yet  been  located.  This,  however, 
proves  nothing;  for  the  sand  storms  of  a  single  year 
would  bury  the  springs  four  feet  deep.  A  truer  in- 
dication of  the  great  age  of  the  reservoir  is  the  old 
tree  growing  up  out  of  the  center;  and  that  brings 
up  the  question  how  we  know  the  age  of  these  an- 
cient ruins  —  that  is,  the  age  within  a  hundred  years 
or  so.  Ask  settlers  round  how  old  Casa  Grande  is; 
and  they  will  tell  you  five  or  six  hundred  years. 
Yet  on  the  very  face  of  things,  Casa  Grande  must 
be  thousands  of  years  older  than  the  other  ruins  of 
the  Southwest. 

Why? 

First  as  to  historic  records:  did  Coronado  see 
Casa  Grande  in  1540,  when  he  marched  north  across 
the  country?  He  records  seeing  an  ancient  Great 
House,  where  Indians  dwelt.  Bandelier,  Fewkes  and 
a  dozen  others  who  have  identified  his  itinerary, 
say  this  was  not  Casa  Grande.  Even  by  1540,  Casa 
Grande  was  an  abandoned  ruin.  Kino,  the  great 


244     CASA  GRANDE  AND  THE  GILA 

Jesuit,  was  the  first  white  man  known  to  have  visited 
the  Great  House;  and  he  gathered  the  Pimas  and 
Papagoes  about  and  said  mass  there  about  1694. 
What  a  weird  scene  it  must  have  been  —  the  Sacaton 
Mountains  glimmering  in  the  clear  morning  light; 
the  shy  Indians  in  gaudy  tunics  and  yucca  fiber 
pantaloons  crowding  sideways  through  the  halls  to 
watch  what  to  them  must  have  been  the  gorgeous 
vestments  of  the  priest.  Then  followed  the  eleva- 
tion of  the  host,  the  bowing  of  the  heads,  the  raising 
of  the  standard  of  the  Cross;  and  a  new  era,  that 
has  not  boded  well  for  the  Pimas  and  Papagoes,  was 
ushered  in.  Then  the  Indians  scattered  to  their 
antelope  plains  and  to  the  mountains;  and  the  priest 
went  on  to  the  Mission  of  San  Xavier  del  Bac. 

The  Jesuits  suffered  expulsion,  and  Garcez,  the 
Franciscan,  came  in  1775,  and  also  held  mass  in 
Casa  Grande.  Garcez  says  that  it  was  a  tradition 
among  the  Moki  of  the  northern  desert  that  they 
had  originally  come  from  the  south,  from  the  Morn- 
ing Glow  of  Casa  Grande,  and  that  they  had  inhab- 
ited the  box-canons  of  the  Gila  in  the  days  when 
they  were  "  a  little  people."  This  establishes  Casa 
Grande  as  prior  to  the  cave  dwellings  of  the  Gila 
or  Frijoles;  and  the  cave  dwellings  were  practically 
contemporaneous  with  the  Stone  Age  and  the  last 
centuries  of  the  Ice  Age.  Now,  the  cave  dwellings 
had  been  abandoned  for  centuries  before  the  Span- 
iards came.  This  puts  the  cave  age  contemporane- 
ous with  or  prior  to  the  Christian  era. 

In  the  very  center  of  the  Casa  Grande  reservoir, 


CASA  GRANDE  AND  THE  GILA     245 

across  the  doorways  of  caves  in  Frijoles  Canon,  grew 
trees  that  have  taken  centuries  to  come  to  maturity. 

The  Indian  tradition  is  that  soon  after  a  very 
great  flood  of  turbulent  waters,  in  the  days  when  the 
Desert  was  knee-deep  in  grass,  the  Indian  Gods  came 
from  the  Underworld  to  dwell  in  Casa  Grande. 
(Not  so  very  different  from  theories  of  evolution 
and  transmigration,  is  it?)  The  people  waxed  so 
numerous  that  they  split  off  in  two  great  families. 
One  migrated  to  the  south  —  the  Pimas,  the  Papa- 
goes,  the  Maricopas;  the  others  crossed  the  moun- 
tains to  the  north  —  the  Zuriis,  the  Mokis,  the 
Hopis. 

Yet  another  proof  of  the  great  antiquity  is  in  the 
language.  Between  Papago  and  Moki  tongue  is 
not  the  faintest  resemblance.  Now  if  you  trace  the 
English  language  back  to  the  days  of  Chaucer,  you 
know  that  it  is  still  English.  If  you  trace  it  back  to 
55  B.  C.  when  the  Roman  and  Saxon  conquerors 
came,  there  are  still  words  you  recognize  —  thane; 
serf,  Thor,  Woden,  moors,  borough,  etc.  That  is, 
you  can  trace  resemblances  in  language  back  1,900 
years.  You  find  no  similarity  in  dialects  between 
Pima  and  Moki,  and  very  few  similarities  in  physical 
conformation.  The  only  likenesses  are  in  types  of 
structure  in  ancient  houses,  and  in  arts  and  crafts. 
Both  people  build  tiered  houses.  Both  people  make 
wonderful  pottery  and  are  fine  weavers,  Moki  of 
blankets  and  Pima  of  baskets;  and  both  people  as- 
cribe the  art  of  weaving  to  lessons  learned  from 
their  goddess,  the  Spider  Maid. 


246    CASA  GRANDE  AND  THE  GILA 

There  are  few  fireplaces  among  the  ancient  dwell- 
ings of  the  Pimas  and  Papagoes,  but  lots  of  fire  pits 
—  sipapus  —  where  the  spirits  of  the  Gods  came 
through  from  the  Underworld.  Dancing  floors, 
may  pole  rings,  abound  among  the  cave  dwellings: 
mounds  and  platforms  and  courts  among  the  Casa 
Grande  ruins.  The  sun  and  the  serpent  were  fa- 
vored symbols  to  both  people,  a  fact  which  is  easily 
understood  in  a  cloudless  land,  where  serpents  sig- 
nified nearness  of  water  springs,  the  greatest  need 
of  the  people.  You  can  see  among  the  cave  dwell- 
ings where  earthquakes  have  tumbled  down  whole 
masses  of  front  rooms;  and  both  Moki  and  Papago 
have  traditions  of  "  the  heavens  raining  fire." 

It  has  been  suggested  by  scientists  that  the  cliffs 
were  cities  of  refuge  in  times  of  war,  the  caves  and 
Great  Houses  were  permanent  dwellings.  This  is 
inferred  because  there  were  no  kivas  or  temples 
among  the  cliff  ruins,  and  many  exist  among  the 
caves  and  Great  Houses.  Gushing  and  Hough  and 
I  think  two  or  three  others  regard  Casa  Grande  as 
a  temple  or  great  community  house,  where  the 
tribes  of  the  Southwest  repaired  semi-annually  for 
their  religious  ceremonies  and  theatricals. 

We  moderns  express  our  emotions  through  the 
rhythm  of  song,  of  dance,  of  orchestra,  of  play,  of 
opera,  of  art.  The  Indian  had  his  pictographs  on 
the  rocks  for  art,  and  his  pottery  and  weaving  to 
express  his  craftsmanship;  but  the  rest  of  his  artistic 
nature  was  expressed  chiefly  by  religious  ceremonial 
or  theatrical  dance,  similar  to  the  old  miracle  plays 


CASA  GRANDE  AND  THE  GILA     247 

of  the  Middle  Ages.  For  instance,  the  Indians 
have  not  only  a  tradition  of  a  great  flood,  but  of  a 
maiden  who  was  drawn  from  the  Underworld  by  her 
lover  playing  a  flute;  and  the  Flute  Clans  celebrate 
this  by  their  flute  dance.  The  yearly  cleansing  of 
the  springs  was  as  great  a  religious  ceremony  as  the 
'  Israelites'  cleansing  of  personal  impurity.  Each 
family  belonged  to  a  clan,  and  each  clan  had  a  reli- 
gious lodge,  secret  as  any  modern  fraternal  order. 

The  mask  dances  of  the  Southwest  are  much  mis- 
understood by  white  people.  We  see  in  them  only 
what  is  grotesque  or  perhaps  obscene.  Yet  the  spir- 
its of  evil  and  the  spirits  of  goodness  are  represented 
under  the  Indian's  masked  dances,  just  as  the  old 
miracle  plays  represented  Faith,  Hope,  Charity, 
Lust,  Greed,  etc.  There  is  the  Bird  Dance  repre- 
senting the  gyrations  of  hummingbird,  mocking-bird, 
quail,  eagle,  vulture.  There  is  the  dance  of  the 
"  mud-heads."  Have  we  no  "  mud-heads  "  befud- 
dling life  at  every  turn  of  the  way?  There  is  the 
dance  of  the  gluttons  and  the  monsters.  Have  we 
no  unaccountable  monsters  in  modern  life?  Read 
the  record  of  a  single  day's  crime;  and  ask  yourself 
what  mad  motive  tempted  humans  to  such  certain 
disaster.  We  explain  a  whole  rigmarole  of  motives 
and  inheritance  and  environment.  The  Indian 
shows  it  up  by  his  dance  of  the  monsters. 

Perhaps  one  of  the  most  beautiful  ceremonials  is 
the  corn  dance.  Picture  to  yourself  the  kivas 
crowded  with  spectators.  The  priests  come  down 
bearing  blankets  in  a  circle.  The  blanket  circle  sur- 


248     CASA  GRANDE  AND  THE  GILA 

rounds  the  altar  fire.  The  audience  sits  breathless 
in  the  dark.  Musicians  strike  up  a  beating  on  the 
stone  gong.  A  flute  player  trills  his  air.  The  blan- 
kets drop.  In  the  flare  of  the  altar  fire  is  seen  a 
field  of  corn,  round  which  the  actors  dance.  The 
priests  rise.  The  blankets  hide  the  fire.  It  is  the 
Indian  curtain  drop.  When  you  look  again,  there  is 
neither  pageant  of  dancers,  nor  field  of  corn.  So 
the  play  goes  on  —  a  dozen  acts  typifying  a  dozen 
scenes  in  a  single  night. 

Good  counsel,  too,  they  gave  in  those  miracle 
plays  and  ceremonial  dances.  "  If  wounded  in  bat- 
tle, don't  cry  out  like  a  child.  Pull  out  the  arrow. 
Slip  off  and  die  with  silence  in  the  throat."  "  When 
you  go  to  the  hunt,  travel  with  a  light  blanket."  We 
talk  of  getting  back  to  Mother  Earth.  The  Indian 
chants  endless  songs  to  the  wonder  of  the  Great 
Earth  Magician,  creator  of  life  and  crops.  Fire, 
too,  plays  a  mysterious  part  in  all  theories  of  life 
creation;  and  this,  too,  is  the  subject  of  a  dance. 

Then  came  dark  days.  Tribes  from  the  far 
Athabasca  came  down  like  the  Vandals  of  Europe 
—  Navajo  and  Apache,  relentless  warriors.  From 
Great  Houses  the  people  of  the  Southwest  retired  to 
cliffs  and  caves.  When  the  Spaniards  came  with 
firearms  and  horses,  the  situation  was  almost  one  of 
extermination  for  the  sedentary  Indians;  and  they  re- 
tired to  such  heights  as  the  high  mesas  of  the 
Tusayan  Desert.  Whether  when  white  man  stopped 
raid  by  the  warlike  tribes,  it  was  better  or  worse  for 
the  peaceful  Pima  and  Papago  and  Moki,  it  is  hard 


CASA  GRANDE  AND  THE  GILA     249 

to  say;  for  the  white  man  began  to  take  the  Indian's 
water  and  the  Indian's  land.  It's  a  story  of  slow 
tragedy  here.  In  the  days  of  the  overland  rush  to 
California,  when  every  foot  of  the  trail  was  beset 
by  Apache  and  Navajo,  it  was  the  Pima  and  Papago 
offered  shelter  and  protection  to  the  white  over- 
lander.  What  does  the  Indian  know  of  "  prior 
rights  "  in  filing  for  water?  Have  not  these  waters 
been  his  since  the  days  of  his  forefathers,  when  men 
came  with  their  families  from  the  Morning  Glow  to 
the  box-canons  of  the  Gila  and  Frijoles?  If  prior 
rights  mean  anything,  has  not  the  Pima  prior  rights 
by  ten  thousand  years?  But  the  Pima  has  not  a 
little  slip  of  government  paper  called  a  deed.  The 
big  irrigation  companies  have  tapped  the  streams 
above  the  Indian  Reserve;  and  the  waters  have  been 
diverted.  They  don't  come  to  the  Indians  any 
more.  All  the  Indian  gets  is  the  overflow  of  the 
torrential  rains  —  that  only  brings  the  alkali  wash 
to  the  surface  of  the  land  and  does  not  flush  it  off. 
The  Pima  can  no  longer  raise  crops.  Slowly  and 
very  surely,  he  is  being  reduced  to  starvation  in  a 
country  overflowing  with  plenty,  in  a  country  whicti 
has  taken  his  land  and  his  waters,  in  a  country  whose 
people  he  loyally  protected  as  they  crossed  the  con- 
tinent to  California. 

What  are  the  American  people  going  to  do  about 
it?  Nothing,  of  course.  When  the  wrong  has 
been  done  and  the  tribe  reduced  to  extermination  by 
inches  of  starvation,  some  muckraker  will  rise  and 
write  an  article  about  it,  or  some  ethnologist  a 


250    CASA  GRANDE  AND  THE  GILA 

brochure  about  an  exterminated  people.  Mean- 
time, the  children  of  the  Pimas  and  Papagoes  have 
not  enough  to  eat  owing  to  the  white  man  taking  all 
their  water.  They  are  the  people  of  "  the  Golden 
Age,"  "  the  Morning  Glow." 

We  drove  back  from  Casa  Grande  by  starlight 
over  the  antelope  plains.  I  looked  back  to  the 
crumbling  ruins  of  the  Great  House,  and  its  five  com- 
pounds, where  the  men  and  women  and  children  of 
the  Morning  Glow  came  to  dance  and  worship  ac- 
cording to  all  the  light  they  had.  Its  falling  walls 
and  dim  traditions  and  fading  outlines  seemed  typ- 
ical of  the  passing  of  the  race.  Why  does  one  peo- 
ple pass  and  another  come? 

Christians  say  that  those  who  fear  not  God,  shall 
pass  away  from  the  memory  of  men,  forever. 

Evolutionists  say  that  those  who  are  not  fit,  shall 
not  survive. 

The  Spaniard  of  the  Southwest  shrugs  his  gay 
shoulders  under  a  tilted  sombrero  hat,  and  says 
Quien  sabe?  "  Who  knows?  " 


CHAPTER  XV 

SAN   XAVIER    DEL    BAG    MISSION,    TUCSON,    ARIZONA 

IT  is  the  Desert.  Incense  and  frankincense, 
fragrance  of  roses  and  resin  of  pines,  cedar 
smells  smoking  in  the  sunlight,  scent  the  air. 
Sunrise  comes  over  the  mountain  rim  in  shafts  of  a 
chariot  wheel ;  and  the  mountains,  engirting  the  Des- 
ert round  and  round,  are  themselves  veiled  in  a  mist, 
intangible  and  shimmering  as  dreams  —  a  mist  shot 
with  the  gold  of  sunlight;  and  the  air  is  champagne, 
ozone,  nectar.  Except  in  the  dead  heat  of  mid- 
summer, snow  shines  opal  from  the  mountain  peaks; 
and  in  the  outline  of  yon  Tucson  Range,  the  figure 
of  a  giant  can  be  seen  lying  prone,  face  to  sunlight, 
face  to  stars,  face  to  the  dews  of  heaven,  as  the  faces 
of  god-like  races  ever  are. 

You  wind  round  a  juniper  grove  — "  cedars  of 
Lebanon,"  the  Old  Testament  would  call  it.  There 
is  the  silver  tinkle  of  a  bell;  and  the  flocks  come 
down  to  the  watering  pools,  flocks  led  by  maidens,  as 
in  the  days  of  Rachael  and  Jacob ;  and  the  shepherds 
—  only  they  call  them  "  herders,"  fight  for  first  place 
round  the  water  pool,  as  they  did  in  the  days  of 
Rachael  and  Jacob.  Then,  you  come  to  a  walled 
spring  where  date  palms  shade  the  ground.  And  the 

251 


252     SAN  XAVIER  DEL  BAG  MISSION 

maidens  are  there,  "  drawing  water  from  the  well," 
carrying  water  in  ollas  on  their  heads,  bronzed  stat- 
ues of  perfect  poise  and  perfect  grace,  daughters  of 
the  Desert,  hard  lovers,  hard  haters,  veiled  as  all 
mysteries  are  veiled. 

You  turn  but  a  spur  in  the  mountains:  you  dip 
into  a  valley  smoking  with  the  dews  of  the  morn- 
ing; or  come  up  a  mesa, —  and  a  winged  horseman 
spurs  past,  hair  tied  back  by  red  scarf,  pantaloons 
of  white  linen,  sash  of  rainbow  colors;  and  you  are 
amid  the  dwellings  of  men.  Strings  of  red  chile 
like  garlands  of  huge  red  corals  hang  against  the 
sun-baked  brick  or  clay.  Curs  come  out  and  bark 
at  the  heels  of  your  horse  —  that  is  why  the  Oriental 
always  called  an  enemy  "  a  dog."  Pottery  makers 
look  up  from  their  kiln  fires  of  sheep  manure,  at  you, 
the  remote  passerby.  The  basket  workers  weave 
and  weave  like  the  Three  Fates  of  Life.  One  old 
woman  is  so  aged  and  wizened  and  infirm  that  she 
must  sit  inside  her  basket  to  carry  out  the  pattern  of 
what  life  is  to  her;  and  the  sunlight  strikes  back  from 
the  heat-baked  walls  in  a  glare  that  stabs  the  eye; 
and  you  hear  the  tinkle  of  the  bells  from  the  water- 
ing pools. 

Then,  suddenly,  for  the  first  time,  you  see  It. 

You  have  turned  a  spur  of  the  Mountains,  dipped 
into  a  valley,  come  up  on  the  Mesa  into  the  sunlight, 
and  there  It  is  —  the  eternal  mountains  with  their 
eternal  lavender  veil  round  the  valley  like  the  tiered 
seats  of  a  coliseum,  the  mist  like  a  theater  drop 
curtain  where  you  may  paint  your  own  pictures  of 


SAN  XAVIER  DEL  BAG  MISSION     253 

fancy,  and  in  the  midst  of  the  great  amphitheater 
rises  an  island  rock;  and  on  the  island  rock  is  a 
grotto ;  and  in  the  grotto  is  the  figure  of  the  Mother 
of  Christ  —  in  purplish  blue,  of  course,  as  betokens 
eternal  purity  —  and  below  the  island  of  rock  in 
the  midst  of  the  amphitheater  something  swims  into 
your  ken  that  is  neither  of  Heaven  nor  earth. 
White,  glaringly  white  as  the  very  spotlessness  of 
Heaven,  twin-towered  as  befitting  the  dual  nature  of 
man,  flesh  and  spirit;  pointed  in  its  towers  and 
minarets  and  belfries,  betokening  the  reaching  of 
the  spirit  of  Man  up  to  God;  lions  between  the 
arches  of  the  roofed  piazzas,  as  betokening  the  lion- 
hearted  spirit  of  Man  fighting  his  enemies  of  Flesh 
and  Spirit  up  to  God  1 

Palms  before  arched  white  walls  shut  out  the 
world  —  Peace  and  Seclusion  and  Purity  1 

You  dip  into  a  valley,  the  scent  of  the  cedars 
in  your  nostrils  and  lungs,  the  peace  of  God  in  your 
heart.  Then  you  come  up  to  a  high  mesa  and  you 
see  the  vision  of  the  white  symbol  swimming  be- 
tween earth  and  sky  but  always  pointing  skyward. 

Where  are  you,  anyway:  in  Persia  amid  floating 
palaces,  on  the  Nile,  approaching  the  palaces  of  Al- 
lahabad in  India,  or  coming  up  to  Moorish  minarets 
and  twin  towns  of  the  Alhambra  in  Spain? 

Believe  me,  you  are  in  neither  Europe,  Asia,  nor 
Africa.  You  are  in  a  much  despised  land  called 
"  America,"  whence  wealth  and  culture  run  off  to 
Europe,  Asia  and  Africa,  to  find  what  they  call 
"  art  "  and  "  antiquity." 


254    SAN  XAVIER  DEL  BAG  MISSION 

It  is  October  3rd  in  Tucson,  Arizona ;  not  far  from 
the  borders  of  Old  Mexico  as  the  rest  of  the  world 
reckon  distance.  The  rain  has  been  falling  in  tor- 
rents. Rain  is  not  supposed  to  fall  in  the  Desert, 
but  it  has  been  coming  down  in  slant  torrents  and  the 
sky  is  reflected  everywhere  in  the  road-side  pools. 
The  air  is  soft  as  rose  petals,  for  the  altitude  is 
only  2,000  feet;  too  high  to  be  languid,  too  low  for 
the  sting  of  autumn  frosts. 

We  motor,  first,  through  the  old  Spanish  town  — 
relics  of  a  grandeur  that  America  does  not  know 
to-day,  a  grandeur  more  of  spirit  than  display.  The 
old  Spanish  grandee  never  counted  his  dollars,  nor 
measured  up  the  value  of  a  meal  to  a  guest.  But  he 
counted  honor  dear  as  the  Virgin  Mary,  and  made 
a  gamble  of  life,  and  hated  tensely  as  he  loved.  The 
old  mansion  houses  are  fallen  in  disrepute,  to-day. 
They  are  given  over,  for  the  most  part  to  Chinese 
and  Japanese  merchants;  but  through  the  open  win- 
dows you  can  still  see  plazas  and  patios  of  inner 
courtyards,  where  oleanders  are  in  perpetual  bloom 
and  roses  climb  the  trellis  work,  and  the  parrot 
calls  out  "  swear  words "  of  Spanish  pirate  and 
highwayman.  St.  Augustine  Mission,  where  heroes 
shed  martyr  blood,  is  now  a  saloon  and  dance  hall, 
but  where  rags  and  tatters  flaunted  from  the  clothes 
lines  of  negro  and  Japanese  and  Chinese  tenant,  I 
could  not  but  think  of  the  torn  flags  that  mark  the 
most  heroic  action  of  regiments. 

From  the  Spanish  Town  of  Tucson,  which  any 
other  nation  would  have  treasured  as  a  landmark 


SAN  XAVIER  DEL  BAG  MISSION     255 

and  capitalized  in  dollars  for  the  tourist,  you  pass 
modern  mansions  that  wisely  follow  the  Spanish- 
Moorish  type  of  architecture,  most  suited  to  Desert 
atmosphere. 

Then  you  come  on  the  Tucson  Farms  Company 
Irrigation  project,  now  sagebrush  and  cactus  land 
put  under  the  ditch  from  Santa  Cruz  River  and 
turned  over  to  settlers  from  Old  Mexico  —  who  were 
driven  out  by  the  Revolution  —  for  $25  an  acre. 
You  see  the  lonely  eyed  woman  pioneer  sitting  at  the 
door  of  the  tent  flap. 

Moisture  steams  up  from  the  river  like  a  morning 
incense  to  the  sun.  The  Tucson  Range  of  mountains 
shimmers.  Giant  cactus  stand  ghost-like,  centuries 
old,  amid  the  mesquite  bush;  and  in  the  columnar 
bole  of  the  cactus  trees  you  see  the  holes  where  the 
little  desert  wren  has  pecked  through  for  water  in 
a  waterless  season. 

Then,  before  you  know  it,  you  are  in  the  Papago 
Indian  Reserve.  The  finest  basket  makers  of  the 
world,  these  Papagoes  are.  They  make  baskets  of 
such  close  weave  that  they  will  hold  water,  and  you 
see  the  Papago  Indian  women  with  jars  —  ollas  —  of 
water  on  their  head  going  up  and  down  from  the 
water  pools.  Basket  makers  weave  in  front  of  the 
sun-baked  adobe  walls  where  hang  the  red  strings 
of  chile  like  garlands.  On  the  whole,  the  Indian 
faces  are  very  happy  and  good.  They  do  not  care 
for  wealth,  these  children  of  the  Desert.  Give  them 
"  this  day  their  daily  bread,"  and  they  are  content, 
and  thank  God. 


256     SAN  XAVIER  DEL  BAC  MISSION 

Then  the  mountains  close  in  a  cup  round  the  shim- 
mering valley.  In  the  center  of  the  valley  rises  an 
island  of  rock,  the  rock  of  the  Grotto  of  the  Vir- 
gin ;  and  a  white  dome  and  twin  towers  show,  glare 
white,  almost  unearthly,  with  arches  pointing  to 
Heaven,  and  lions  in  white  all  along  the  roof  typi- 
fying the  strength  that  is  of  God.  There  is  a  dome 
in  the  middle  of  the  roof  line  —  that  is  the  Moorish 
influence  brought  in  by  Spain.  There  are  twin  towers 
on  each  side ;  and  in  the  towers  on  the  right  hand  side 
are  three  brass  bells  to  call  to  work  and  matins  and 
vespers.  It  may  be  said  here  that  the  French  Mis- 
sion may  always  be  known  by  its  single  spire  and 
cross;  the  Spanish  Mission  by  its  twin  towers  and 
bells.  The  French  Mission  rings  its  bell.  The 
Spanish  Mission  strikes  its  bells  with  a  hammer  or 
gong.  One  utters  cheer.  The  other  sounds  a  rich, 
low,  mellow  call  to  worship.  The  walls  and  pillars 
and  arches  are  all  marble  white;  and  you  are  looking 
on  one  of  the  most  ancient  Missions  of  the  New 
World —  San  Xavier  del  Bac,  of  Tucson,  Arizona. 

The  whole  effect  is  so  oriental  as  to  be  startling. 
The  white  dome  might  be  Indian  or  Persian,  but  the 
pointed  arches  and  minarets  are  unmistakably  Moor- 
ish —  that  is,  Moorish  brought  across  by  Spain. 
The  entrance  is  under  an  arched  white  wall,  and  the 
courtyard  looks  out  behind  through  arched  white 
gateway  to  the  distant  mountains. 

Here  four  sisters  of  St.  Joseph  conduct  a  school 
for  the  little  Papagoes ;  and  what  a  school  it  is !  It 
might  do  honor  to  the  Alhambra.  Palms  line  the 


SAN  XAVIER  DEL  BAG  MISSION     257 

esplanade  in  front  of  the  arched,  walled  entrance. 
Collie  dogs  rise  lazily  under  the  deep  embrasures  of 
the  arched  plazas.  A  parrot  calls  out  some  Spanish 
gibberish  of  bygone  days.  A  snow-white  Persian 
kitten  frisks  its  plumy  tail  across  the  brick-paved  walk 
of  the  inner  patio;  and  across  the  courtyard  I  catch 
a  glimpse  of  two  Shetland  ponies  nosing  for  notice 
over  a  fence  beside  an  ancient  Don  Quixote  nag  that 
evidently  does  duty  for  dignitaries  above  Shetland 
ponies.  An  air  of  repose,  of  antiquity,  of  apartness, 
rests  on  the  marble  white  Mission,  as  of  oriental 
dreams  and  splendor  or  European  antiquity  and  cul- 
ture. 

I  ring  the  bell  of  the  reception  room  to  the  right 
of  the  church  entrance.  Not  a  sound  but  the  echo 
of  my  own  ring!  I  enter,  cross  through  the  parlor 
and  come  on  the  Spanish  patio  or  central  courtyard. 
What  a  place  for  prayers  and  meditation  and  the 
soul's  repose!  Arched  promenades  line  both  sides 
of  the  inner  court.  Here  Jesuit  and  Franciscan 
monks  have  walked  and  prayed  and  meditated  since 
the  Sixteenth  Century.  By  the  hum  as  of  busy  bees 
to  the  right,  I  locate  the  schoolrooms,  and  come  on 
the  office  of  the  Mother  Superior  Aquinias. 

What  a  pity  so  many  of  us  have  an  early  impress 
of  religion  as  of  vinegar  aspect  and  harsh  duty  hard 
as  flint  and  unhuman  as  a  block  of  wood.  This 
Mother  Superior  is  merry-faced  and  red-blooded 
and  human  and  dear.  She  evidently  believes  that 
goodness  should  be  warmer,  dearer,  truer,  more  at- 
tractive and  kindly  than  evil;  and  all  the  little  In- 


258     SAN  XAVIER  DEL  BAC  MISSION 

dian  wards  of  the  four  schoolrooms  look  happy  and 
human  and  red-blooded  as  the  Mother  Superior. 

A  collie  pup  flounders  round  us  up  and  down  the 
court  walk  where  the  old  missionary  monks  suffered 
cruel  martyrdom.  Poll,  the  parrot,  utters  senten- 
tious comment;  and  the  Shetland  ponies  whinny 
greetings  to  their  mistress.  All  this  does  not  sound 
like  vinegar  goodness,  does  it? 

But  it  is  when  you  enter  the  church  that  you  get 
the  real  surprise.  Three  times,  the  desertion  of  this 
Mission  was  forced  by  massacre  and  pillage.  Twice 
it  was  abandoned  owing  to  the  expulsion  of  Jesuit 
and  Franciscan  by  temporal  power.  For  seventy 
years,  the  only  inhabitants  of  a  temple  stately  as  the 
Alhambra  were  the  night  bats,  the  Indian  herders, 
the  border  outlaws  of  the  United  States  and  Mexico. 
Yet,  when  you  enter,  the  walls  are  covered  with  won- 
derful mural  painting.  Saints'  statues  stand  about 
the  altar,  and  grouped  about  the  dome  of  the  groined 
ceiling  are  such  paintings  as  would  do  honor  to  a 
European  Cathedral. 

The  brick  and  adobe  walls  are  from  two  to  six 
feet  thick.  Not  a  nail  has  ever  been  driven  in  the 
adobe  edifice.  The  doors  are  of  old  wood  in 
huge  panels  mortised  and  dovetailed  together.  The 
latch  is  an  iron  bar  carved  like  a  Damascus  sword. 
The  altar  is  a  mass  of  gilding  and  purple.  To  be 
sure,  the  saints'  fingers  have  been  hacked  off  by 
wandering  cowboy  and  outlaw  and  Indian;  but  you 
find  that  sort  of  vandalism  in  the  British  Museum 
and  Westminster  Abbey.  The  British  Museum  had 


SAN  XAVIER  DEL  BAG  MISSION     259 

careful  custodians.  For  over  seventy  years,  this  an- 
cient Mission  stood  open  to  the  winds  of  heaven  and 
the  torrential  rains  and  the  midnight  bats.  Only 
the  faithfulness  of  an  old  Indian  chief  kept  the  sacred 
vessels  from  desecration.  When  the  fathers  were 
expelled  for  political  reasons,  old  Jose,  of  the 
Papagoes,  carried  off  the  sacred  chalices  and  candles 
till  the  padres  should  return,  when  he  brought  them 
from  hiding. 

Gothic  temples  are  usually  built  in  one  long,  clear 
arch.  The  roof  of  San  Xavier  del  Bac  is  a  series 
of  the  most  perfect  groined  domes,  with  the  deep 
embrasures  of  the  windows  on  each  side  colored  shell 
tints  in  wave-lines.  Because  of  the  height  and  depth 
of  the  windows,  the  light  is  wonderfully  clear  and 
soft.  The  church  is  used  now  only  by  Indian  chil- 
dren; and  did  Indian  children  ever  have  such  a  mag- 
nificent temple  in  which  to  worship?  To  the  left 
of  the  entrance  is  a  wonderful  old  baptismal  font 
of  pure  copper,  which  has  been  the  envy  of  all  col- 
lectors. One  wonders  looking  at  the  ancient  vessel 
whether  it  was  baptized  with  the  blood  of  all  the 
martyrs  who  died  for  San  Xavier  —  Francesca  Gar- 
cez,  for  instance  ?  There  is  a  window  in  this  baptis- 
try, too,  that  is  the  envy  of  critics  and  collectors. 
It  is  set  more  deeply  in  the  wall  than  any  window  in 
the  Tower  of  London,  with  pointed  Gothic  top  that 
sends  shafts  of  sunlight  clear  across  the  earthen 
floor. 

From  the  baptistry  I  ascended  to  the  upper  tow- 
ers. The  stairs  are  old  timber  set  in  adobe  and 


260    SAN  XAVIER  DEL  BAG  MISSION 

brick,  through  solid  walls  of  a  thickness  of  six  feet. 
The  view  from  the  belfries  above  is  wonderful. 
You  see  the  mountains  shimmering  in  the  haze. 
You  see  the  little  square  adobe  matchbox  houses  of 
Papago  Indians,  with  the  red  chile  hanging  against 
the  wall,  and  the  women  coming  from  the  spring, 
and  the  men  husking  the  corn.  You  wonder  if  when 
San  Xavier  was  besieged  and  besieged  and  be- 
sieged yet  again  by  Apache  and  Navajo  and  Pima, 
the  beleaguered  priests  took  refuge  in  these  towers, 
and  came  down  to  die,  only  to  save  their  Mission. 
Against  Indian  arms,  it  may  be  said,  San  Xavier 
would  be  an  impregnable  fortress.  Yet  the  priests 
of  San  Xavier  were  three  times  utterly  destroyed  by 
Indians. 

When  you  come  to  seek  the  history  of  San  Xavier, 
you  will  find  it  as  difficult  to  get,  as  a  guide  out  to 
the  Mission.  As  a  purely  tourist  resort,  leaving 
out  all  piety  and  history,  it  should  be  worth  hundreds 
of  thousands  of  dollars  a  year  to  Tucson.  Yet  it 
took  me  the  better  part  of  a  day  to  find  out  that 
San  Xavier  is  only  nine  miles  and  not  eighteen  from 
Tucson. 

And  this  is  typical  of  the  difficulty  of  getting  the 
real  history  of  the  place.  Jesuit  Relations  of  New 
France  have  been  published  in  every  kind  of  edition, 
cheap  and  dear.  Jesuit  Relations  of  New  Spain, 
who  knows?  The  Franciscans  succeeded  the  Jesuits; 
and  the  Franciscans  do  not  read  the  history  of  the 
Jesuits.  It  comes  as  a  shock  to  know  that  Spanish 
padres  were  on  the  Colorado  and  Santa  Cruz  at 


SAN  XAVIER  DEL  BAG  MISSION     261 

the  time  Jacques  Cartier  was  exploring  the  St.  Law- 
rence. We  have  always  believed  that  Spanish 
conquistadores  slaughtered  the  Indians  most  ruth- 
lessly. Study  the  mission  records  and  you  get  an- 
other impression,  an  impression  of  penniless, 
friendless,  unprotected  friars  "  footing  "  it  600,  700, 
900  miles  from  Old  Mexico  to  the  inmost  recesses 
of  the  Desert  canons.  In  late  days,  when  a  friar 
set  out  on  his  journey,  twenty  mounted  men  acted 
as  his  escort;  and  that  did  not  always  save  him  from 
death;  for  there  were  stretches  of  the  journey  ninety 
miles  without  water,  infested  every  mile  of  the  way 
by  Apaches;  and  these  stretches  were  known  as  the 
Journeys  of  Death.  When  you  think  of  the  ruth- 
less slaughter  of  the  conquistadores,  think  also  of 
the  friars  tramping  the  parched  sand  plains  for  900 
miles. 

While  Fray  Juan  de  la  Asuncion  and  Pedro  Nadol 
are  the  first  missionaries  known  in  Arizona  about 
1538,  Father  Kino  was  the  great  missionary  of  1681 
to  1690,  officiating  at  the  Arizona  Missions  of  San 
Xavier  del  Bac  and  Tumacacori.  There  are  reports 
of  the  Jesuits  being  among  the  Apaches  as  early  as 
1630  —  say  early  as  the  days  of  the  Jesuits  in  Can- 
ada; but  who  the  missionaries  were,  I  am  unable  to 
learn.  Rebellion  and  massacre  devastated  the  Mis- 
sions in  1680  and  in  1727;  but  by  1754,  the  mis- 
sionaries were  back  at  San  Xavier  and  had 
twenty-nine  stations  commanding  seventy-three  dif- 
ferent pueblos.  In  1767,  for  political  reasons,  tke 
Jesuits  suffered  expulsion;  and  the  Franciscans  came 


2J62     SAN  XAVIER  DEL  BAG  MISSION 

in  —  tramping,  as  told  before,  600  and  900  miles. 
It  was  under  the  Franciscans  that  the  present  struc- 
ture of  San  Xavier  was  built.  Garcez  was  the  most 
famous  of  the  Franciscans.  He  spent  seven  years 
among  the  Pimas  and  Papagoes  and  Yumas;  but 
one  hot  midsummer  Sunday  —  July  17,  1781  — 
during  early  mass,  the  Indians  rose  and  slew  four 
priests,  all  the  Spanish  soldiers  and  all  the  Spanish 
servants.  Garcez  was  among  the  martyrs.  San 
Xavier,  as  it  at  present  stands,  is  supposed  to  have 
been  completed  in  1797;  but  in  1827-9,  came  an- 
other political  turnover  and  all  foreign  missionaries 
were  expelled.  Tumacacori  and  San  Xavier  were 
always  the  most  important  of  the  Arizona  Missions. 
Originally  quite  as  magnificent  a  structure  as  San 
Xavier,  Tumacacori  has  been  allowed  to  go  to  ruin. 
Of  late,  it  has  been  made  a  United  States  monument. 
It  is  a  day's  journey  from  Tucson. 

To  describe  San  Xavier  is  quite  impossible,  except 
through  canvas  and  photograph.  There  is  some- 
thing intangibly  spiritual  and  unearthly  in  its  very 
architecture;  and  this  is  the  spirit  in  which  it  was 
originally  built.  At  daybreak,  a  bell  called  the 
builders  to  prayers  of  consecration.  At  nightfall, 
vesper  bells  sent  the  laborer  home  with  the  blessing 
of  the  church.  For  the  most  part,  the  workers  were 
Mexicans  and  Indians;  and  as  far  as  can  be  gathered 
from  the  annals,  voluntary  workers.  The  Papagoes 
and  Pimas  at  that  time  numbered  5,000,  of  whom  500 
lived  round  the  Missions,  the  rest  spending  the  sum- 
mers hunting  in  the  mountains. 


SAN  XAVIER  DEL  BAG  MISSION     263 

When  the  American  Government  took  over  Ari- 
zona, San  Xavier  went  under  the  diocese  of  New 
Mexico.  From  Santa  Fe,  New  Mexico,  to  Tucson 
was  600  miles  across  desert  mountains  and  canons, 
every  foot  of  the  way  infested  by  Apache  warriors; 
and  the  heroism  of  that  trail  was  marked  by  the  same 
courage  and  constancy  as  signalized  the  founding 
and  maintenance  of  the  other  early  Spanish  Mis- 
sions. 

It  would  be  a  mistake  to  say  that  San  Xavier  has 
been  restored.  Restoration  implies  innovation;  and 
San  Xavier  stands  to-day  as  it  stood  in  the  sixteen 
hundreds,  when  Father  Kino,  the  famous  mathe- 
matician and  Jesuit  from  Bavaria,  came  wandering 
up  from  the  Missions  of  Lower  California,  preach- 
ing to  the  Yumas  and  Pimas  of  the  hot,  smoking 
hot,  Gila  Desert,  and  held  mass  in  Casa  Grande,  the 
Great  House  or  Garden  of  Eden  of  the  Indian's 
Morning  Glow.  A  lucky  thing  it  is  that  restoration 
did  not  imply  change  in  San  Xavier;  for  the  Mis- 
sion floats  in  the  shimmering  desert  air,  unearthly, 
eerie,  unreal,  a  thing  of  beauty  and  dreams  rather 
than  latter  day  life,  white  as  marble,  twin-towered, 
roof  domed  and  so  dazzling  in  the  sunlight  to  the 
unaccustomed  eye  that  you  somehow  know  why 
rows  of  restful,  drowsy  palms  were  planted  in  line 
along  the  front  of  the  wall. 

Perhaps  it  is  that  it  comes  on  you  as  such  a  com- 
plete surprise.  Perhaps  it  is  the  desert  atmosphere 
in  this  cup  of  the  mountains;  but  all  the  other  mis- 
sions of  the  Southwest  are  adobe  gray,  or  earth 


264    SAN  XAVIER  DEL  BAG  MISSION 

color  showing  through  a  veneer  of  drab  white- 
wash. 

There  is  the  giant,  century-old  desert  cactus 
twisted  and  gnarled  with  age  like  the  trees  in  Dante's 
Inferno,  but  with  bird  nests  in  the  pillared  trunks, 
where  little  wrens  peck  through  the  bark  for  water. 
You  look  again.  A  horseman  has  just  dismounted 
beneath  the  shade  of  a  fine  old  twisted  oak;  but  be- 
yond the  oak  the  vision  is  there,  glare,  dazzling, 
white,  twin-towered  and  arched,  floating  in  mid-air, 
a  vision  of  beauty  and  dreams. 

Life  seems  to  sleep  at  San  Xavier.  The  moun- 
tains hemming  in  the  valley  seem  to  sleep.  The 
shimmering  blue  valley  sleeps.  The  sunlight  sleeps 
against  the  glare  white  walls.  The  huge  old  mor- 
tised door  to  the  church  stands  open,  all  silent  and 
asleep.  The  door  of  the  Mission  parlor  stands  open 

—  sunlight  asleep  on  a  checkered  floor.     You  enter. 
Your  footsteps  have  an  echo  of  startling  impudence 

—  modern  life  jumping  back  into  past  centuries! 
You  ring  the  gong.     The  sound  stabs  the  sleeping 
silence,  and  you  almost  expect  to  see  ghosts  of  Fran- 
ciscan friar  and  Jesuit  priest  come  walking  along  the 
arcaded  pavement  of  the  inner  courtyard  to  ask  you 
what  all  this  modern  noise  is  about;  but  no  ghosts 
come.     In  fact,  no  one  comes.     San  Xavier  is  all 
asleep.     You  cross  through  the  parlor  to  the  inner 
patio  or  courtyard,   arched  all  around  three  sides 
with  the  fourth  side  looking  through  a  wonderfully 
high    arched    gateway    out   to    the    far    mountains. 
Polly  turns  on  her  perch  in  her  cage,  and  goes  back 


SAN  XAVIER  DEL  BAG  MISSION     265 

to  sleep.  The  white  Persian  kitten  frisks  his  white- 
plumed  tail;  and  also  turns  over  and  goes  to  sleep. 
Two  collie  dogs  don't  even  emit  a  "  woof."  They 
arch  their  pointed  noses  with  the  fine  old  aristocratic 
air  of  the  unspoken  question:  what  are  you  of  the 
Twenty  Century  doing  wandering  back  into  the 
mystery  and  mysticism  and  quietude  of  the  religious 
sixteen  hundred?  But  if  you  keep  on  going,  you 
will  find  the  gentle-voiced  sisterhood  teaching  the 
little  Pimas  and  Papagoes  in  the  schoolrooms.  Bancroft 

San  Xavier,  architecturally,  is  sheer  delight  to  the 
eye.  The  style  is  almost  pure  Moorish.  The  yard 
walls  are  arched  in  harmony  with  the  arched  outline 
of  the  roof;  and  in  the  inner  courtyard  you  will  no- 
tice the  Spanish  lion  at  the  intersection  of  all  the 
roof  arches.  In  front  of  the  Mission  buildings  is  a 
walled  space  of  some  sixty  by  forty  feet,  where  the 
Indians  used  to  assemble  for  discussion  of  secular 
matters  before  worship.  On  the  front  wall  in  high 
relief  are  placed  the  arms  of  St.  Francis  of  Assist, 
and  in  the  sacristry  to  the  right  of  the  altar  you  will 
find  mural  drawings  and  a  painting  of  Saint  Ig- 
natius. Thus  San  Xavier  claims  as  her  founders 
and  patrons  both  Franciscan  and  Jesuit.  This  is 
easily  explained.  The  Franciscans  came  up  over- 
land across  the  Desert  from  the  City  of  Mexico. 
The  Jesuits  came  up  inland  from  their  Mission  on 
the  Gulf  of  California.  Father  Kino,  the  Jesuit, 
from  a  Bavarian  university,  was  the  first  missionary 
to  hold  services  among  the  Pimas  and  Papagoes, 
and  if  he  did  not  lay  the  foundations  of  San  Xavier, 


266    SAN  XAVIER  DEL  BAG  MISSION 

then  they  were  laid  by  his  immediate  successors. 
The  escutcheon  of  the  Franciscans  on  the  wall  is 
a  twisted  cord  and  a  cross  on  which  are  nailed  the 
arms  of  the  Christ  and  the  arm  of  St.  Francis.  The 
Christ  arm  is  bare.  The  Franciscan's  arm  is  cov- 
ered. 

Unlike  other  Missions  built  of  adobe,  San  Xavier 
is  of  stone  and  brick.  It  is  100  by  thirty  feet.  The 
transept  on  each  side  of  the  nave  runs  out  twenty- 
one  feet  square.  The  roof  above  the  nave  is  sup- 
ported by  groined  arches  from  door  to  altar.  The 
cupola  above  the  altar  is  fifty  feet  to  the  dome. 
The  other  vaults  are  only  thirty  feet  high.  The 
windows  are  high  in  the  clearstory  and  set  so  deeply 
in  the  casement  that  the  light  falling  on  the  mural 
paintings  and  fresco  work  is  sifted  and  softened. 
Practically  all  the  walls,  cupola,  dome,  transept, 
nave,  are  covered  with  mural  paintings.  There  is 
the  coming  of  the  Spirit  to  the  Disciples.  There 
is  the  Last  Supper.  There  is  the  Conception. 
There  is  the  Rosary.  There  is  the  Hidden  Life  of 
the  Lord. 

The  main  altar  has  evidently  been  constructed 
by  the  Jesuits;  for  the  statue  of  St.  Francis  Xavier 
stands  below  the  Virgin  between  figures  of  St. 
Peter  and  St.  Paul  and  God,  the  Creator.  On  the 
groined  arches  of  the  dome  are  figures  of  the  Wise 
Men,  the  Flight  to  Egypt,  the  Shepherds,  the  An- 
nunciation. Gilded  arabesques  colored  in  Moorish 
shell  tints  adorn  the  main  altar.  Statues  of  the 
saints  stand  in  the  alcoves  and  niches  of  the  pillars 


SAN  XAVIER  DEL  BAG  MISSION     267 

and  vaults.  Two  small  doors  lead  up  to  the  towers 
from  the  main  door.  Look  well  at  these  doors  and 
stairways.  Not  a  nail  has  been  driven.  The  doors 
are  mortised  of  solid  pieces.  The  first  flight  of 
stairs  leads  to  the  choir.  Around  the  choir  are  more 
mural  paintings.  Two  more  twists  of  the  winding 
stair;  and  you  are  in  the  belfry.  Twenty-two  more 
steps  bring  you  to  the  summit  of  the  tower  —  a  gal- 
leried  cupola,  seventy-five  feet  above  the  ground, 
where  you  may  look  out  on  the  whole  world. 

Pause  for  a  moment,  and  look  out.  The  moun- 
tains shimmer  in  their  pink  mists.  The  sunlight 
sleeps  against  the  adobe  walls  of  the  scattered  In- 
dian house.  You  can  hear  the  drone  of  the  chil- 
dren from  the  schoolrooms  behind  the  Mission. 
You  can  see  the  mortuary  chapel  down  to  the  right 
and  the  lions  supporting  the  arches  of  the  Mission 
roof.  Father  Kino  was  a  famous  European  scholar 
and  gentleman.  He  threw  aside  scholarship.  He 
threw  aside  comfort.  He  threw  aside  fame;  and 
he  came  to  found  a  Mission  amid  arabs  of  the  Ameri- 
can Desert.  The  hands  that  wrought  these  paint- 
ings on  the  walls  were  not  the  hands  of  bunglers. 
They  were  the  hands  of  artists,  who  wrought  in  love 
and  devotion.  Three  times,  San  Xavier  was  dyed 
in  martyr  blood  by  Indian  revolt. 

Priests,  whose  names  even  have  been  lost  in  the 
chronicles,  were  murdered  on  the  altars  here,  thrown 
down  the  stairs,  cut  to  pieces  in  their  own  Mission 
yard.  Before  a  death  which  they  coveted  as  glory, 
what  a  life  they  must  have  led.  To  Tucson  Mis- 


268     SAN  XAVIER  DEL  BAG  MISSION 

sion  was  nine  miles;  but  to  Tumacacori  was  eighty; 
to  Old  Mexico,  900.  Occasionally,  they  had  escort 
of  twelve  soldiers  for  these  long  trips;  but  the  sol- 
diers' vices  made  so  much  trouble  for  the  holy  fath- 
ers that  the  missionaries  preferred  to  travel  alone, 
or  with  only  a  lay  brother.  Sandaled  missionaries 
tramped  the  cactus  desert  in  June,  when  the  heat  was 
at  its  height;  and  they  traversed  the  mountains  when 
winter  snows  filled  all  the  passes.  They  have  not 
even  left  annals  of  their  hardships.  You  know  that 
in  such  a  year,  Father  Kino  tramped  from  the  Gulf 
of  California  to  the  Gila,  and  from  the  Gila  to  the 
Rio  Grande.  You  know  in  such  another  year,  nine- 
teen priests  were  slain  in  one  day.  On  such  another 
date,  a  missionary  was  thrown  over  a  precipice;  or 
slain  on  the  high  altar  of  San  Xavier.  And  always, 
the  priests  opposed  the  outrages  of  the  soldiery,  the 
injustice  of  the  ruling  rings.  Father  Kino  petitions 
the  royal  house  of  Spain  in  1686  that  converts  be  not 
forcibly  seized  and  "  dragged  off  to  slavery  in  the 
mines,  where  they  were  buried  alive  and  seldom  sur- 
vived the  abuse."  He  gets  a  respite  from  the  King 
for  all  converts  for  twenty  years.  He  does  not  per- 
mit converts  to  be  taken  as  slaves  in  the  mines  or 
slaves  in  the  pearl  fisheries;  so  the  ruling  rings  of 
Old  Mexico  obstruct  his  enterprises,  lie  about  his 
Missions,  slander  him  to  the  patrons  who  supply 
him  with  money,  and  often  reduce  his  missions  to 
desperate  straits;  but  wherever  there  is  a  Mission, 
Father  Kino  sees  to  it  that  there  are  a  few  goats. 
The  goats  supply  milk  and  meat. 


SAN  XAVIER  DEL  BAG  MISSION     269 

The  fathers  weave  their  own  clothing,  grow 
their  own  food,  and  hold  the  fort  against  the 
enemy  as  against  the  subtle  designs  of  the  Devil. 
These  fathers  mix  their  own  mortar,  make 
their  own  bricks,  cut  their  own  beams,  lay  the  plaster 
with  their  own  hands.  Now,  remember  that  the 
priests  who  did  all  this  were  men  who  had  been  art- 
ists, who  had  been  scholars,  who  had  been  court 
favorites  of  Europe.  Father  Kino  was,  himself, 
of  the  royal  house  of  Bavaria.  But  jealousy  left 
the  Missions  unprotected  by  the  soldiers.  Soldier 
vices  roused  the  Indians  to  fury;  and  the  priests 
were  the  first  to  fall  victims.  Go  across  the  Moki 
Desert.  You  will  find  peach  orchards  planted  by 
the  friars;  but  you  cannot  find  the  graves  of  the  dead 
priests.  We  considered  the  Apaches  a  dangerous 
lot  as  late  as  1880.  In  1686,  in  1687,  in  1690, 
Father  Kino  crossed  Apache  land  alone.  I  cannot 
find  any  record  of  the  Spanish  Missions  at  this  pe- 
riod ever  receiving  more  than  $15,000  a  year  for 
their  support.  Ordinarily,  a  missionary's  salary 
was  about  $150  a  year.  Out  of  that,  if  he  employed 
soldiers,  he  must  pay  their  wages  and  keep. 

Well,  by  and  by,  the  jealousy  of  the  governing 
ring,  kept  from  abusing  the  Indians  by  the  priests, 
brought  about  the  expulsion  of  the  Jesuits.  The 
Franciscans  took  up  the  work  where  the  Jesuits  left 
off.  Came  another  political  upheaval.  The  Fran- 
ciscans were  driven  out.  San  Xavier's  broken  win- 
dows blew  to  the  rains  and  winds  of  the  seven 
heavens.  Cowboys,  outlaws,  sheep  herders,  housed 


270    SAN  XAVIER  DEL  BAG  MISSION 

beneath  mural  paintings  and  frescoes  that  would  have 
been  the  pride  of  a  European  palace.  Came  Ameri- 
can occupation;  and  San  Xavier  was  —  not  restored 
—  but  redeemed.  It  was  completely  cleaned  out 
and  taken  over  by  the  church  as  a  Mission  for  the 
Indians. 

To-day,  no  one  worships  in  San  Xavier  but  the 
little  Indian  scholars.  Look  at  the  drawings  of 
Christ,  of  the  Virgin,  of  the  Wise  Men!  Look  at 
the  dreams  of  faith  wrought  into  the  aged  and  beau- 
tiful walls!  Frankly  —  let  us  be  brutally  frank 
and  truthful,  was  it  all  worth  while?  Wouldn't 
Kino  have  done  better  to  have  continued  to  grace 
the  courts  of  Bavaria? 

In  the  old  days,  Pima  and  Papago  roped  their 
wives  as  in  a  hunt,  and  if  the  fancy  prompted,  abused 
them  to  death.  On  the  walls  of  San  Xavier  is  the 
Annunciation  to  the  Virgin,  another  view  of  birth 
and  womanhood.  In  the  old  days,  the  Indians  killed 
a  child  at  birth,  if  they  didn't  want  it.  On  the 
walls  of  San  Xavier  are  pictured  the  wise  men  ador- 
ing a  Child.  Spanish  rings  and  trusts  wanted  little 
slaves  of  industry  as  American  rings  and  trusts  want 
them  to-day.  Behold  a  Christ  upon  the  walls  set- 
ting free  the  slaves!  Was  it  all  worth  while?  It 
depends  on  your  point  of  view  and  what  you  want. 
Though  the  winds  of  the  seven  heavens  blew  through 
San  Xavier  for  seventy  years  and  bats  habited  the 
frescoed  arches,  it  stands  to-day  as  it  stood  two 
centuries  ago,  a  thing  unearthly,  of  visions  and 


SAN  XAVIER  DEL  BAG  MISSION     271 

dreams;  pointing  the  way,  not  to  gain,  but  to  good- 
ness; making  for  a  little  space  of  time  on  a  little 
space  of  Desert  earth  what  a  peaceful  heaven  life 
might  be. 


THE    END 


